Cross-cultural Perspective Of Humorous Language In Both Chinese And English

In this thesis, Chinese and English verbal humor are discussed fromtwo paralleled perspectives: their similarities and disparities. Theirsimilarities are shown in linguistic, pragmatic and rhetorical points whiletheir disparities are characterized in their carriers and targets,respectively.In the first chapter, modern studies in humor at home and abroadare listed in a general manner. What is worth noting is that humor byitself dose not equal to wits and sarcasm. But they are not preciselydistinct in this paper.In the second chapter, Chinese and English humor is similar intheir linguistic, pragmatic and rhetorical perspectives, while theirdisparity in carriers and targets are discussed in the latter part of thesecond chapter.Despite their similarities and disparities, its cross-culturalimplications determine whether people of English and Chinese culturecan understand each other. Three aspects of Cultural Dimension Theoryare used to solve the problem.Summary of the whole thesis is provided in the forth chapter. Itcontains limitation of the thesis and proposal for future studies. Forexample, some real and natural conversation between Chinese andEnglish, data, and questionnaires should be contained to back up thehumor theory in later researches. Except verbal humor, such nonverbalhumor as masquerade, silent film and visual pun are mentioned in thepaper.