A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Verbal Humor In Cross-cultural Communication

Verbal humor comprises humor expressed in language and created in language.As a special form of language and a carrier of culture, it expresses our attitudestowards life, views and thoughts and it is the wisdom and intelligence of human.Initially, humor study only focused on the fields such as psychology, aesthetics,philosophy and others. Since the1980s, linguists have studied verbal humor from theperspective of linguistics and put forward some significant theories on it.Verbal humor and culture are closely linked. Though the cross-culturalcommunication develops quickly, the researches on verbal humor in cross-culturalcommunication are much fewer. The cross-cultural communication between US andChina becomes more and more frequent. As English and Chinese verbal humor playan important role in these two languages and cultures, if the two sides can understandthe verbal humor of the counterparts, the cross-cultural communication will bepromoted. Therefore, it is of necessity to make a contrastive study on English andChinese verbal humor in cross-cultural communication and explore the cultural causesof these differences.The author makes a study on the features and functions of verbal humor first. Onfeatures of verbal humor, the author elaborates on the phonological features, lexicalfeatures, syntactic features, semantic features and pragmatic features and sums up thepsychosomatic function, communicative function and cultural function. With theEnglish and Chinese verbal humor as the research objectives, the thesis makes acontrastive study of similarities and differences of them. On similarities, the authormainly explains how English and Chinese verbal humor make use of phonologicalambiguity, lexical ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity and figure of speech to producehumorous effects. In terms of the differences, the author makes a contrastive study onthe five main differences of English and Chinese verbal humor by illustratingexamples: topics, joking targets, occasions, modes of expression and styles of verbalhumor. The author sums up five main cultural causes of these differences incross-cultural communication: history and geographical environment, religions andbeliefs, cultural values, thinking patterns and social conventions. Then some strategiesare put forward to narrow the gap of verbal humor understanding in cross-cultural communication: understanding linguistic features of English and Chinese,understanding the differences between English and Chinese cultures, overcomingethnocentrism and developing empathy.The significance of this research is that understanding the similarities anddifferences of English and Chinese verbal humor and the cultural causes of thesedifferences can efficiently improve cross-cultural communication between China, theUS and the UK. It also gives the implication that the application of verbal humor canbe one possible strategy to lead students to learn the culture in the second languageteaching. In language classes, with the laughter of students, the students can get thedifferences between cultures and can also develop their cultural awareness to improvetheir cross-cultural communication.