Cross-Cultural Study On English And Chinese Verbal Humor

Humorous language known as particular part of language can bring laughter and amusement to people in jocular and satiric linguistic forms, and vividly reflects human civilization and wisdom with the effect of amusement and enlightenment. Language of each nation mirrors its unique and strong connotation of culture, and thus English and Chinese verbal humor is no exception. There is no doubt that foreign language learners or cross-cultural communicators are able to grasp literal meaning of verbal humor successfully, but they are prone to "reproduce" humorous language with characteristics of exotic culture by combining it with their own existing cultural background in communication, which may weaken the effect of the exotic humor. As a result, it is impossible to understand exotic verbal humor without taking cultural factors into account.Many scholars make researches into humorous language in China or in other countries, most of their researches are about humorous language production from cognitive perspective. Humorous language is closely related to the society and culture, whereas contrastive researches on differences between western and Chinese culture reflecting in English and Chinese verbal humor from the social and cultural perspective are comparatively few in number. It is observed that there is potential on verbal humor research from cross-cultural perspective.First of all, the research demonstrates formation-mechanism of humor, based on Grice's Cooperative Principle and Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory. Then, by collecting, classifying, comparing and analyzing verbal humor between Home with Kidsâ… and The War at Homeâ… ,which are two Chinese and American situational comedies concerning similar background such as similar members of the family, similar subject etc. and mirroring their own features and connotation of culture, the research endeavors to seek for their similarities such as techniques applied in verbal humor, functions of verbal humor and differences involving topics of verbal humor, joking targets, occasions in use of verbal humor and expressing forms and further explores the cultural causes concerning the roots of cultural differences between west and China such as different history and geography and social system and differences of cultural patterns in western and Chinese culture like differences of thought mode, values and life styles leading to differences on English and Chinese verbal humor from cross-cultural perspective, which aims at deepening understanding of western and Chinese culture and having laughter and amusement shared by people from different countries and races to promote cross-cultural communication. Besides, it is hoped that verbal humor will be used properly and spread widely in practice by assimilating advantages on English verbal humor.