建桥中英文幽默映射的语言与文化差异大学论文

Linguistic and Cultural Differences Reflected in Humor of English and ChineseLinguistic and Cultural Differences Reflected in Humor ofEnglish and ChineseABSTRACTAs a way and purpose for interpersonal communication, humor is an important part of all cultures and language. Although there are many articles about humor, the study in this field is still not enough. This thesis intends to explicate the nature of humor by analyzing some humorous stories and the differences between linguistic and cultural. According to the differences between Chinese and Western cultures, This thesis goes further to make a exploration on the linguistic and cultural reasons that lead to barriers in the understanding of humor in English and Chinese, Western culture and Chinese culture. And the significance of this passage is not only to highlight the importance of different culture learning, but also has a great help for us who read and understand the Chinese and English books.Key words:Humor; Chinese and Western culture; Language; Cultural differences中英文幽默映射的语言与文化差异摘要作为人际交往的一种方式和目的，幽默是所有文化和语言重要组成部分。

虽然有关幽默的文章很多，但有关幽默的研究一直没有得到足够的认识。

本文通过对一些幽默故事的具体分析，旨在阐明幽默的本质，以及幽默映射出的语言与文化差异。

根据中西方文化的不同，本文又进一步探究了影响我们理解中英文幽默的语言与文化障碍。

本文的意义不仅在于突出不同文化学习的重要性，更对我们在阅读和理解中文和英文书籍有着很大的帮助。

关键词：幽默；中西方文化；语言；文化差异Table of Contents1 Introduction (2)2 Literature Review (2)3 General Reflection on the Study of Humor (3)3.1 Definition of Humor ················································错误！未定义书签。

3.2 Types of Humor ······················································错误！未定义书签。

3.3 Linguistic Theory of Humor ·······································错误！未定义书签。

3.4 Origin and Development of Humor in English and Chinese ···错误！未定义书签。

3.4.1 Origin of English Humor ···································错误！未定义书签。

3.4.2 Origin of Chinese Humor ···································错误！未定义书签。

3.4.3 Development of English Humor (12)3.4.4 Development of Chinese Humor (12)4 Linguistic Formation-mechanism of Humor in English and Chinese (6)4.1 Humor Produced by Ambiguity ···································错误！未定义书签。

4.2 Humor Produced by Rhetoric ······································错误！未定义书签。

4.3 Humor and Pragmatics (13)4.4 Linguistic Features of English and Chinese (13)5 Different Cultural Factors in English and Chinese Humor (14)5.1 Different Cultural Values (14)5.1.1 Value System (14)5.1.2 Value Contrast (15)5.2 Differert Patterns of Thoughts (15)5.3 Different World Wiew (15)5.4 Different Histories (16)5.5 Different Social System (17)6 Conclusion (20)References (21)Acknowledgements (22)1 IntroductionIt is well known that humor is a widespread existence in linguistics. It is so common that it leaves every area of every country, every race, every nation's culture and all field of human. In other words, there are human beings where there must be humorous. One person whether having a sense of humor or not,is universally considered the most complex and delicate humanistic quality that separates our human and animal. Just as A. A. Berger once said, “There is no escaping humor and there is no subject, whether it be sex, marriage, polities, religion, work, sports —you name it —that has not been ridiculed, joked about, and used or abused one wa y or another, as grist of someone‟s comic militancy. “[1]Humor plays the role that can not be ignored in our life, especially in communication. Humor makes our relationship more enjoyable because of offering a relaxed and amusing talking atmosphere. And it is humor provids an outlet for us to unbosom our negative emotions that we can reduce the feelings of negativity. Meanwhile, because it can give us consolation in times of stress that humor is considered to be a powerful weapon kill the hardship and misfortune.In a word, humor helps us keep a balance of personage and society.Because of these functions that humor has drawed the attention of lots of people. People had begun the research on the field of humor in the 2000 years ago. However, the study of humor is a very complicated and multifaceted task that even up to now ,there is no single definition of human acceptable to all investigations in the area.which covers different disciplines like linguistics, psychology, physiology and so on.However, humor is not only a form of language but also an integral part of culture. This thesis is aimed at discuss the differences between linguistic and cultural from the aspect of verbal humor. It will start from the general study of humor by the diversity of concepts, classifications and humorous exposition of the theory of incompatibility, as well as humor in the review of British history, to conduct a preliminary understanding of verbal humor. The reason why the author proposes the language and culture is to reflect English is differ from Chinese in cultural background, language humor reached a different communicative effects. The research is benefit to help the learner of these two languages to overcome cultural barriers and promote cultural exchanges.It is based on the content of above studies that this thesis includes three chapters. Thefirst chapter is a generally reflects the study of humor, which includs the difinition of humor; the type of humor; the theories of humor, the origin and the development of humor in Chinese and English. Chapter two attempts to examine the linguistic formation —mechanisms of humor in English and Chinese, by giving some examples to explain how humor is produced and why the humor is laughable. Chapter three focuses on the analysis of the relationship between culture, thought, religion, history, and social system; Finally, there is a conclusion is given.2 Literature ReviewFor a more complete understanding of the issues, this thesis carrys out deep research onhumor and describe what happened in this area over the past 30 years.The research of humor is a long process. From ancient times to the present, Some foreign scholars and professors have been from the linguistic, psychology and aesthetics point of view on the content of humor conducted a wide range of research, So they made a prominent contribution to this issue.In the book "Humor and Laughter" published in 1985, Apte, M.L. studied humor from an anthropological point of view. From the unique point of view of humor, he made laughter and smile is a kind of unconscious behavior, which is the outward expression of the person who will smile, and he believes that socio-cultural reality is the condition of humor.Victor Raskin in his book Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, published in 1985, introduces a number of classifications of humor and some examples illustrating them. He discusses the large groups of theories of humor. One of the most important theories is frame-shifting theory, which illustrates the semantic leaps in humor interpretation and cognition. By analyzing several English humors and Chinese humors, which proves the frame-shifting occurs at various level of language. He also divides all the theories of humor into three categories, including social behavior analysis, psychoanalysis and cognitive perception.The first theory is related to incongruity, the second with disparagement, and the third with suppression.In the book Humorous Language, published in 1985, Walter Nash emphasizes the connection of humorous content to the stylistic or linguistic sense, especially in the jokes of position and formula. Nash points out that humor is produced by both spoken and written languages, and he explores the status and goals of the humor, the relationship between humor and social attitudes, and joke between speaker and audience.This article “Close to the sense of humor: A historical review”comes from the book "Humor" published in 1998, Martin R. pointed out that our social role will require us to control and reject many impulses and desires to meet the surrounding Environmental requirements and other people questioned us. Humor can regulate the social pressure, it can make us have a better sense of self-esteem and self-confidence in the face of external threats. Therefore, humor can provide us with a temporary way which we can escape the shackles of life, despite the real life there is the phenomenon of hypocrisy, stupidity and unfairness,but we can still get a sense of freedom and certain credibility.Claire Kramsch, who published the book "Language and Culture" in 2000, pointed out that if someone wanted to know what the speaker said, the reason the speaker said the reasonand how the speaker said, this person must go deep into the specific language scene at that time. In addition, he must link the speaker's beliefs, ideas, and language styles to a larger contextual culture. Moreover, humor discourse can be of greater significance only if the recipient is fully aware of the relevant cultural connotations. However, because the English and Chinese humorous language contains their own cultural characteristics and characteristics, You can not smoothly communicate if you difficult to fully understand the two different sense of humor.The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English gives a definition of humor, which is published in 2006. Humor can lead to entertainment and laughter, and it has the ability to identify or express interesting and interesting things. Humor has the ability to create entertainment or improve the quality of entertainment and discover comedy in life, and be able to create and reflect them in art. It can also make people to laugh without consciousness.In 1932, Lin Yutang English translation of "humor" translated into Chinese "幽默", followed by a lot of humorous works. Recent years, many Chinese experts and scholars began to study humor from semantics, practicality and language style.In "Humor Linguistics" book, published in 1995, the Pearl Hu first introduced the origin humor and humor development, He analyzes humor in depth from the humorous atmosphere of speech, the pattern of humor in speech, and its surface structure and deep structure.In the book " the Importance of Life and My Country and the People" published in 1998 and 2008, Lin Yu Dan elaborated on the philosophy of life in China: people should respect "do" and "do not" in the same way, maintain a humorous healthy attitude, and remember that we always live in a humorous atmosphere. He discussed the Chinese sense of humor and evaluated it, and he thought humor as a point of view, mentality and a way of treating life. In addition, according to the level of humor, He thinks there is low-level humor and high-level humor.In the article “The Source and Difference between Chinese and Western Humor” in Journal of Yangzhou Normal College, published in 2002, Peng Juan analyzes the source of Chinese humor and Western humor aiming at exploring the mechanism of humor. In this study, she studied humor from the view of pragmatic. Through some specific examples and a series of analyzes, she points out that the root causes for the differences between Chinese humour and the West humor are economic, political and cultural.Among the 2004, one of an article, entitled Study of Verbal Humor Practice, Zhang Minfirst explained the etymology of humor and described the general understanding of humor in humor research. In this paper, through the use of pragmatism, language humor and pragmatic studies established a link between. In order to understand language humor more comprehensively and more pragmatically, this paper makes a pragmatic study of verbal language humor so that the communication can become more reality.In 2007 published "cultural pragmatic perspective to explore Chinese and English verbal humor", Wu Xisuo pointed out that humor and context are closely related. This paper also clarifies the classification of context and explains the relationship between humor and context. And from the angle of pragmatics, he analyzes Chinese and English jokes with the Cooperative Principle (CP) and Relevant Theory (RT). By studying the humor from pragmatic, the thesis figures out the limitation of the CP and RT applied to the comprehension of humor. It concludes that the root of linguistic differences in Chinese and English humor is the cultural differences in Chinese and English Culture. Therefore, this passage discusses the causes of cultural differences between Chinese and English from the belief of history, religion, geography, and social system. And this thesis reveal the different cultural patterns in Chinese and English culture by the way of analysis of English humor.3 A General Reflection on the Study of HumorThis chapter tries to explore the nature of humor from the comparisons of definition,taxonomy, origin and evolution of humor in English and Chinese.3. 1 Definition of HumorThe term “humor” has its origin in the Latin word of the same spelling, which means “fluid” or “moisture”. Before the 1900s, many scholars beli eved that there were four basic bodily humors,which includes melancholy, choler, blood, and phlegm. A person who is normal and healthy was balanced in these four humors. And that means that person was “in good humor”. In contrast, any kind of imbalance was said to be “out of humor”. And it was believed that the humor can promote the balance of our body. The present sense of humor started roughly two hundred years ago. And before that, a person who was humorous not only is a ridiculous humor but also a victi m of laughter. From then on, a “humorist” was considered to be a person who epertly produced intersting uncoordinated and some ridiculous thoughts and events.From the above definitions and explanations, we can draw a conclusion of the nature of humor, which includes three aspects:1. Humor is something funny or causing laughter, designed to be comical or amusing, etc.2. Humor is the way that stimulates people to think by causing them to laugh.3. Humor can bring some cognition or some experience about mentality.To sum up, most definitions and interpretations of humor mentioned above are one-sided.The reason is that everyone explains humor just from one certain perspective and few can claim itself a perfect one to account for key qualities of humor in several short sentences. And enen the investigators can not give us an acceptable definition. Inspired by the above theories, we think that the topic of humor is worthy of our efforts to study. And we will discuss it further in the following chapters.3. 2 Types of HumorMany scholars are like to classify the humor from different angles. For example, Freud in his book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious distinguished verbal jokes that were produced by use of different language skills with conceptual jokes that were produced by the concepts they expressed. McGhee proposes that“ there has been widespread disagreement about the types of humor through the centuries.”[3] Some humors serve for pleasure, as well as some for satire and obviously some for disclosing philosophy truths. According to the view ofPocheptsov, humor has two major groups. they are situational humor and linguistic humor.In a humor, if language itself isn‟t amusing at all and is just used as a linguistic symbol to describe the playful situation, it is a humor expressed in language. If language is not only used to describe the funny things but also a source to produce humor, we call it a humor created by language.3. 3 Linguistic Theory of HumorAmong the classical theories of humor, the incongruity theory, which mainly focus on the cognitive aspects of humor, is one of the most important and widespread theories. Schopenhauer thinks that “The cause of lau ghter in every case is simple the sudden perception of the incongruity b etween a concept and the real objects”. And Kant thinks laughter as an affection of a kind of feeling, which is from sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing. Morreall argues that amusement is a phenomenon that needs to be explained the humor, which could be described as “the enjoyment of incongruity”. Actually, incongruity is involved in almost all the humor.In the era of Plato, linguistics is just a newcomer in this field, even though the study of humor has a long traditions. In Attar do‟s words, twenty years ago, it would have been fair to say that there was no humor in the field of linguistics, but the puns was a exception. However, this doesn‟t mean that there is few significant contributions have ever been made in the field of linguistic. On the contrary, with the inspiration of the classical theory, the study of humor in the field of language has turned out to be a rapidly developing field. And uncoordinated theory of humor havs become one of the most important application of cognition, and the mode of appreciation and the research of production.As we all know, the incongruity theory always used something of absurd, unexpected and inappropriate as the basis of humor. According to this, humor always combines two disparate ideas, concepts and situations together by using the manner of surprising or unexpected. And the incongruity theory owes a lot to the writings of Kant and Schopenhauer. Kant claims that “laughter is a feeling which is occured arising from the urgent expectation of a sudden transformation into nothing”. [3]3. 4 Origin and Development of Humor in English and ChineseThis part tries to review the origin and development of humor in English and Chinese.3. 4. 1 Origin of English humorFrom the definition, which was given by the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, we can find that humor refers to four liquids or moistures at the outset, which is includes the flood, phlegm, yellow bile or choler and black bile or melancholy. And these liquids are said to have the influence on the mental and physical qualities of a person. In addition, this definition of humor also tells us something concerning about the origin of English humor. History records that the English term “humor” is derived from the ancient L atin word “humor”. Hippocrates who was called the father of medicine and lived in Greek in the 15th century B.C, believes that human‟s body is composed of four cardinal fluids and the proportion of these fluids also will affect people‟s physical quality an d mental disposition. The reason why Etymologists think that humor represents body fluids in its origin is that humor and humid share the same root “hum”In 1682, The modern meaning of humor was established in Britain. And it was not until 1790 that Schiv itz Brili firstly used the its modern meaning in his famous essay “the relations among sensitivity: On Freedom in Jokes and Humor”, which was one of the earliest writings on modern humor.3. 4. 2 Origin of Chinese humorHistorical data shows the origin of humor in China can be traced back at least to the period of Qin Dynasty. About the 8th century (late Xizhou Dynasty), there appeared “you” in palace. “You”, who is also called “Feiyou” in history, who refers to the of ficials whose job is to amuse the king and the aristocrats. And in ancient China, farce, pantomimes and many other funny plays are all called “Fei”, and the players was called “You”. Once the king did something improper, then no one could directly criticize him except “You”, who would be asked to give a expostulations to the king by using humorous ways as wisecracks, burlesques, metaphors and so on. At that time, there was a law which is unwritten that “You” wou ld never be deserved such severe punishment from the king even when they said something wrong. Actually, “Feiyou” may be the earliest humorist in China. The reason is that the Books of Songs has the records, three were a large number of ballads and poems with humorous features in China's first poetry collection.[4] And we can find that these early wokrs shows the nature of Chinese humor which is characterized by tending to make full use of symbolization and allegory, with the purpose of giving some educations to the people andsatirizing the social evils at that time.3. 4. 3 Development of English HumorTo understand the development of English humor, we have to pay attention to the earliest form of English humor-comedy. In his poetry (4th), Aristotle said that the comedy originated with the komos, which is a curious scene in which a group of festive males sang, danced and cavorted around the masses. And it seems that comedy has closely related to some kind of comic ritual or festival of mirth. In essence, comedy usually shows us a story of the protagonist rise from humble or disadvantaged backgrounds who prove themselves through various ordeals. The most common plot of a comedy often goes like this: a young man longs for girl but his desire is frustrated in one way or another but ending in a party or festive ritual.American humor has a short history, only started from the 19th century. And blackamoor played an very important role in the history of American, thus there is a special humor named “black humor”. Contrast with Europe, Americans have a gift for humor that they can accept the worst possible with a nod and a wink and face the future in good spirits. In 1974, Jack Meathenia, a Professor of the Southwest Texas State University, proposed the idea of a society dedicated to the study of American humor in all its various aspects, including belles-lettres, popular comic papers, and various sub-literary media, and circulated a draft constitution.[4] In 1975, in the wake of the unanious adoption of the constitution and the American Humor Studies Association came into being. Mark Twain is one of the most important writers in the history of American humor. The language he used in his work is not only forming a circle in which people can do research on him and his works, but also leting the stuy of humor becomes a hot topic.3. 4. 4 Development of Chinese HumorThe period of Wei and Jin Dynasty was said to the second blooming period of Chinese humor. Forests of Jokes, was the first collection of jokes in China because this book is intented to satirize the society by applying exaggeration, humor and jests.Ming and Qing Dynasties was an another blossom for Chinese humor. Apart from play, humor was used in many other kinds of literary works, such as short stories, prose, poem, etc.[4]For a long time, the develop the humor means very much to Chinese people, and theory on humor is ignored. From 1980s, not only the humor in China began to develop fleetly. Thestudy and theory of humor becomes more diverse and goes deep into various fields and absorbs some foreign theories. Chinese scholars not only studying Chinese humor, but learning humor in other languages.4 Linguistic Formation-mechanism of Humor in English and ChineseHumor is everywhere. It is just like the seasoning in our food, making our conversation and life interesting, joyful and colorful. Palmer saids, a mechanism of humor may be concluded as follows: 1) knowledge that the occasion is …entertainment‟ which would act bothas a humor stimulus and a brake on the sense of threat. (Here, the audience should be alert to the linguistic and paralinguistic form of the utterance which would signal the intention to joke.) 2) The incongruity is itself sufficiently acute to cause arousal but insufficiently acute to provide a threat. 3) Locating the comic meaning reveals retrospectively that the incongruity was not threatening. Verbal humor is achieved mainly through language. People may use the rich variations of language elements to elicit humorous effect. In this chapter, through the analysis of some common types of humor, the author tries to discover what makes a joke or humorous story funny from various linguistic aspects such as syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.4. 1 Humor comes from divergenceIf a language form (word, phrase or sentence) can be more than one way explained reasonably, then we call this language divergence language. Many linguists argue that divergence is a universal phenomenon of linguistics, which exists both in linguistic units, including word, phrase and sentence, and in the practical application of language. On the one hand, divergence can resulting in misunderstanding; on the other hand, it is also conducive to the formation of verbal humor. Divergence is one of the important sources of humor, and is often used as a means of producing humor in life. In addition, divergence humor is actually a misunderstanding or a conflict from different meanings. It may sometimes contain double or multiple meanings, in the wrong way or in an uncoordinated way to understand the differences in sound or gestures and the conflicts of different meanings.4. 2 Humor Produced by RhetoricWestern Rhetoric Encyclopedia thought that rhetoric is one of the three original liberal arts in Western culture. In the long history, rhetoric has changed from time to time. Today, rhetoric is defined as the art of persuasion. In other words，Rhetoric is an art of writing and speaking, and it can persuade people. And rhetoric is sometimes a means of covering the truth.4. 3 Humor and PragmaticsIn the previous sections, scholars and experts studied humor from different points of view. Then this section will examine mainly from the aspects of pragmatics.4. 4 Linguistic Features of English and ChineseThere are all kinds of languages in our world. Some are similar to each other while othersare quite different from each other. English and Chinese belongs to varied language families, and they are distinct in many aspects.Chinese characters is differ from the letters. Chinese characters are a kind of regular writing, which is based on those who can express the meaning of the stroke, and this sound, meaning and format can be synthesized into an organic whole. The English has the nature of the phoneme language system, with tha aim to express the sound, but not the meaning. China's think ing mode emphasizes the characteristics of Chinese characters. Westerners‟ thinking stresses abstractness.In the Chinese expression, the structure of certain sentences may not be complete. The function of verb is not so prominent. The center of an utterance is noun instead of verbs. If the meaning is clear,, subjects and other elements can often be omitted. Sometimes the sentence even may have not beginning and no ending.While English focuses on the completeness and compactness of the sentence. In English, the verb is the key, and the expression of the components can't be omitted. For completeness, at times, a logic subject must be added.Chinese is hypotactic and English is paratactic. The difference of the sentence structure between English and Chinese can be found in the English version and Chinese verses.From the angle of morphology, language can be devided into inflectional language and non-inflectional language. The former called marked language, the latter is non-marked language.Verb has different forms, such as the past form and the past participle. …went‟ is the past form of the verb …go‟ and …gone‟ is the past participle. In different tenses, we should choose different forms, otherwise the sentence is wrong.5 Different Cultural Factors in English and Chinese HumorAs is discussed in above chapter, English humor is differ form Chinese humor in many aspects. And we also learn from Chapter One that the incongruity theories play an important role in analyzing different humors. An expectancy is established when a humor begins. When the ending turns out to go beyond expectation, a sense of surprise or incongruity will arise. To。