On English And Chinese Verbal Humor From The Perspective Of Cross-cultural Communication

Humor, a way of lingual expression, presents man's thought, opinion and attitude towards life. It is also an important part of language and culture, which penetrates and permeates all aspects of human society, and dominates social intercourse and interpersonal communication. In recent years, linguists have come to realize the significance of humor in human communication. During the past two decades, they have conducted vast investigations in humor from such perspective as linguistics, semantics, and psychology, proposing plenty of profound theories. However, the number of the studies dealing with cultural features of humor is comparatively inadequate, let alone those on humors in cross-cultural communication. Obviously, the reasons behind are various. From the linguistic perspective, cross-cultural communication is only a novel field in 1950s, only a newborn baby in its cradle. It's a subject involving varieties of fields, the rudiments of which seem fairly easy to acquire, thus, as a sub-discipline, it often attracts inadequate attention. As a matter of fact, people, along with the advancement of society, tend to put more attention on this subject, which is used to analyze humor techniques vital to communication.Anyone, with a strong sense of humor in daily dealings can acquire a more harmonious interpersonal relationship and a smoother social contact. But humor entails different ends due to different education backgrounds, horizons, depth of cognition and interests. The sharp contrast originates from different cultural backgrounds. Humor in one culture may seem tedious, ridiculous or even insult to those from another cultural background. What's the reason? Because"one had to understand why they said what they said and how they said it to whom in a specific context of situation. In addition, one had to link their words, beliefs and mindsets to a larger context culture."â‘ To a larger extent, only when the recipient understands its cultural connotation enough, can humorous utterance itself be much more meaningful, so is language itself. Since the cultural features are deeply rooted in English and Chinese humor, one could hardly make full understanding of the two different humors as to achieve the fulfillment of communication without such cultural knowledge. Similarly, on the theory of"cultural diversity"and"Incongruity theories", the present thesis attempts to explore the cultural factors exerting influence on humor communication by bringing examples into the scope of cross-cultural communication for analysis.The thesis consists of three parts. Introduction mainly deals with the purpose of the topic selection, the relevant researches at home and abroad, thus, illustrates the theoretical and practical value in studying verbal humor from the perspective of cross-cultural communication.The body is divided into four chapters. Chapter One focuses on analysis of the related theories and the relationship between verbal humor and culture. After the presentation of the definitions, functions and theories on verbal humor, there follows discussions about features of cultures and cross-cultural communication. Based on the above analysis, conclusion about deep relationship between humor and culture is reached, which provides theoretical basis for the following chapters.In Chapter Two, based on"cultural diversity", comparisons between Chinese and English humors are conducted by analyzing many jokes and humorous stories. Thus, conclusions about similarities of creation and application of humor in different cultures are drawn from the analysis of writing techniques and functions of humor.Chapter Three continues to discuss the distinctions between English and Chinese humors based on the application of"cultural diversity"and examples. Firstly, it's discovered that there's a big difference between Chinese and English when topics in humor are chosen. Secondly, the differences are analyzed from the perspective of joking targets. Last, discussions are conducted on different modes of expression in the two humors. The specific analysis of similarities and distinctions of English and Chinese humors will offer materials used in the next chapter.Chapter Four is the central and original part of the thesis. Cultural diversity involves all aspects of life, from history to social system, from world views to values, from social conventions to patterns of thought, from the perspective of which the thesis endeavors to seek for cultural factors affecting the two humors. The content, structure and expression of humors are tremendously affected by the two histories, social systems, values and patterns of thoughts. Without knowledge of the two cultural backgrounds, one can hardly understand and create humors, which will definitely block the process of smooth communication.The last part comes to the conclusion of this thesis, which analyses and summarizes all the contents mentioned above. Humorous language acts as"lubricant"in human communication, but inappropriate humors will have side effects due to the cultural differences, causing mutual misunderstanding. Therefore, it's a key point to find out the cultural factors affecting the production of verbal humor, so as to acquire a better understanding of different humors and promote cultural communication. Additionally, there's another question to be solved in this chapter that how to bridge the gap between the two cultures.This thesis, based on the fruitful studies of various verbal humors, makes efforts to investigate the similarities and distinctions between English and Chinese verbal humors from the perspective of cross-cultural communication and the causes rooted in different cultures, aiming to lend support for a native speaker (Chinese or Western) to appreciate humors in another culture, to overcome of cultural obstacles and to promote mutual and cultural understanding in the global village.