A Comparative Study Of Chinese And English Humorous Advertisements From The Cross-cultural Perspective

Both advertisements and humor boast of a long history, and their combination brings out humorous advertisements. As a special genre, humor bears numerous functions, such as bringing relaxation and joy to the audience, relieving the heavy pressure on them and so on. Permeating through people's daily life, advertisements have been playing a significant and irreplaceable role. This may account for the reason why numerous admen are trying to add humorous elements to their ads to seize the audience's attention, with the purpose of product promotion. However, problems arise in the course of ads'launching. Ads viewed by the native audience as quite humorous seem to be non-humorous at all to the foreign audience. What's worse, some ads may lead to misunderstanding, ambiguity or even annoyance. The reason lies in the cultural characters behind humor.Therefore, it is necessary to do a comparative study on Chinese and English humorous advertisements from the cross-cultural perspective. This thesis focuses on analyzing the similarities and differences between Chinese and English humorous advertisements as well as the rooted cultural causes so that the audiences can make a reasonable choice of the advertised goods while appreciating the humorous ads. In details, Chinese and English humorous advertisements share similarities in the strategies to produce humor while they differ in their choices of topics and joking objects in humorous ads. The study suggests the causes for such differences come to the corresponding distinctive cultural differences and historical and cultural backgrounds. Furthermore, the thesis puts forward strategies for the audience's better understanding and appreciation of Chinese and English humorous ads-to enhance cultural awareness, to improve empathy and to consider the context of culture.With the intensified economic globalization, the international advertisement communication has been more flourishing than ever. Consequently, when launching their ads to the outside world, the admen can never fail to ignore the culture of local market to avoid misunderstanding or inefficiency. The author hopes this thesis can be enlightening in this regard.