The mechanism of humor has become the focus of academic attention and pragmatic presupposition plays a key role in revealing the implied meaning and information processing in language communication. Through the case study of The Tonight Show, the thesis aims to analyze humor generation mechanism from the perspective of pragmatic presupposition. Four aspects of pragmatic presuppositions, including the mutual knowledge and defeasibility of pragmatic presupposition, false pragmatic presupposition and clarified pragmatic presupposition, along with three humor types of puns, satire and absurdity, are respectively discussed for decoding the humor generation mechanism. Qualitative methods are applied to dissect 21 episodes (Episode 58-78) of The Tonight Show Season 9, analyzing the frequency and distribution of each presupposition and humor aspect. Specifically, four examples, categorized by four types of pragmatic presuppositions, are selected here to discuss and elaborate on the humor invoked by pragmatic presuppositions.

Yueqin Wu, Xiayuru Lu. A Study of Humorous Language in Talk Shows from the Perspective of Pragmatic Presupposition: A Case Study of The Tonight Show. Academic Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences (2025), Vol. 8, Issue 4: 44-50. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJHSS.2025.080407.

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