| Investigations into humor have been booming for decades.Yet cross-cultural studies on verbal humor in stand-up comedy shows are rare.This study,therefore,intends to explore and compare the use of verbal humor in Chinese and English stand-up comedy shows by taking examples from Joe Wong's stand-up comedy shows and focusing on strategies,targets and subject matter.Via stratified random sampling,a corpus of humor for 140 punch lines was established by selecting from Joe Wang's 160-minute Chinese and English stand-up video clips.Verbal humor strategies were identified based on Berger's(1976,1998)typology;meanwhile,verbal humor targets and subject matter of verbal humor were inductively classified.Fisher's exact test and the log-likelihood ratio test were conducted for significant differences.Results of the study indicated similar strategies for verbal humor in Chinese and English stand-up comedy shows,but the targets and subject matter of verbal humor were found in significant difference.More specifically,the use of puns was found to be the most ubiquitous verbal humor strategy for both Chinese and English stand-up comedy shows.Targets of verbal humor were notably in disparity varying from friends and family members,to nation and people,and to government,political figures,constitution,economy and history.The most divergent subject matter resided with social phenomenon/issue/reality,personal weakness/shortcoming/failure,ethnicity and immigrant identity,as well as politics,economy and history.Besides,it has been found that the features of verbal humor in Joe Wong's stand-up comedy shows were attributed to exotic immigrant stories,outsider perspectives,as well as uncommon images and styles.Divergent power distance was also found contributory to the discrepancies.This study concludes that disparities in verbal humor represent cross-cultural differences.By implication,it is necessary to boost the cross-cultural awareness for better cross-cultural communication. |
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