Author(s)

Lili Li¹

¹School of Foreign Languages, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang, China.

Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is one of the most representative works of American absurd novel. In his novel, Heller profiles the cold, strange and unexplainable Amercian society. People are unable to realize a successful communication. Absurdity is the theme of Catch-22. The theme of absurdity is not only exposed in novel’s content, but especially in the use of the language of the novel. This paper is going to reveal the absurdity and meaninglessness theme by means of employing Grice’s cooperative principle and pragmatic presupposition, reference/deixis.

Catch-22, Black Humor, Cooperative Principles (CP), Presupposition, Deixis

Li, L.L. (2023) An Analysis of the Black Humor in Catch-22 Based on the Pragmatic Theory. Open Access Library Journal, 10, 1-11. doi: 10.4236/oalib.1110663.