建橋畢業(yè)論文-中英文幽默映射的語言與文化差異

1、<p>　　Linguistic and Cultural Differences Reflected in Humor of English and Chinese</p><p>　　Linguistic and Cultural Differences Reflected in Humor of English and Chinese</p><p><b>　　

2、ABSTRACT</b></p><p>　　As 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 fiel

3、d 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

4、 cultures, This thesis goes further to make a exploration on the linguistic and cultural reasons that</p><p>　　Key words: Humor; Chinese and Western culture; Language; Cultural differences</p><p&

5、gt;　　中英文幽默映射的語言與文化差異</p><p><b>　　摘 要</b></p><p>　　作為人際交往的一種方式和目的，幽默是所有文化和語言重要組成部分。雖然有關(guān)幽默的文章很多，但有關(guān)幽默的研究一直沒有得到足夠的認(rèn)識。本文通過對一些幽默故事的具體分析，旨在闡明幽默的本質(zhì)，以及幽默映射出的語言與文化差異。根據(jù)中西方文化的不同，本文又進(jìn)一步探究了影響

6、我們理解中英文幽默的語言與文化障礙。本文的意義不僅在于突出不同文化學(xué)習(xí)的重要性，更對我們在閱讀和理解中文和英文書籍有著很大的幫助。</p><p>　　關(guān)鍵詞：幽默；中西方文化；語言；文化差異 </p><p>　　Table of Contents</p><p>　　1 Introduction1</p><p>　

7、　2 Literature Review2</p><p>　　3 General Reflection on the Study of Humor4</p><p>　　3.1 Definition of Humor4</p><p>　　3.2 Types of Humor7</p><p>　　3.3 Linguist

8、ic Theory of Humor10</p><p>　　3.4 Origin and Development of Humor in English and Chinese10</p><p>　　3.4.1 Origin of English Humor11</p><p>　　3.4.2 Origin of Chinese Humor11&l

9、t;/p><p>　　3.4.3 Development of English Humor…………………………………………….12</p><p>　　3.4.4 Development of Chinese Humor….……………………………………….12 </p><p>　　4 Linguistic Formation-mechanism of Hum

10、or in English and Chinese12</p><p>　　4.1 Humor Produced by Ambiguity12</p><p>　　4.2 Humor Produced by Rhetoric13</p><p>　　4.3 Humor and Pragmatics…….………………………………………………………13<

11、;/p><p>　　4.4 Linguistic Features of English and Chinese……………………………………….13</p><p>　　5 Different Cultural Factors in English and Chinese Humor……………………………..14</p><p>　　5.1 Different

12、Cultural Values………………………………………………………….14</p><p>　　5.1.1 Value System…………………………………………………………..…14 </p><p>　　5.1.2 Value Contrast………………………………………………………….....15</p><p>　　5.2 Differer

13、t Patterns of Thoughts……………………………………………………..15</p><p>　　5.3 Different World Wiew……………………………………………………………..15</p><p>　　5.4 Different Histories…………………………………………………………………16</p><p>　　5.

14、5 Different Social System……………………………………………………………17</p><p>　　6 Conclusion20</p><p>　　References21</p><p>　　Acknowledgements22</p><p>　　1 Introduction</p>&l

15、t;p>　　It 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, th

16、ere 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 a

17、s A. A. Berger once said, “There is no escaping humor and there is no sub</p><p>　　Humor plays the role that can not be ignored in our life, especially in communication. Humor makes our relationship more en

18、joyable 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 giv

19、e 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 bal</p><p>　　Because of these functions that humor has

20、 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

21、 single definition of human acceptable to all investigations in the area.which covers different disciplines like linguistics, psychology, physiology and so on. </p><p>　　However, humor is not only a form of

22、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 diversi

23、ty 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 auth

24、or proposes the languag</p><p>　　It is based on the content of above studies that this thesis includes three chapters. The first chapter is a generally reflects the study of humor, which includs the difiniti

25、on 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

26、, by giving some examples to explain how humor is produced and why the humor is laughable. Chapter three f</p><p>　　2 Literature Review</p><p>　　For a more complete understanding of the issues,

27、 this thesis carrys out deep research on humor and describe what happened in this area over the past 30 years.</p><p>　　The research of humor is a long process. From ancient times to the present, Some foreig

28、n 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.</p>

29、<p>　　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 u

30、nconscious behavior, which is the outward expression of the person who will smile, and he believes that socio-cultural reality is the condition of humor.</p><p>　　Victor Raskin in his book Semantic Mechanism

31、s 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

32、 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 di

33、vides all the th</p><p>　　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

34、 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

35、and audience.</p><p>　　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 co

36、ntrol 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

37、self-confidence in the face of external threats. Therefore, humor can provide us with a temporary way whic</p><p>　　Claire Kramsch, who published the book "Language and Culture" in 2000, pointed ou

38、t that if someone wanted to know what the speaker said, the reason the speaker said the reason and how the speaker said, this person must go deep into the specific language scene at that time. In addition, he must link t

39、he 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</p><p

40、>　　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 in

41、teresting 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

42、 consciousness.</p><p>　　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 schol

43、ars began to study humor from semantics, practicality and language style.</p><p>　　In "Humor Linguistics" book, published in 1995, the Pearl Hu first introduced the origin humor and humor developm

44、ent, He analyzes humor in depth from the humorous atmosphere of speech, the pattern of humor in speech, and its surface structure and deep structure.</p><p>　　In the book " the Importance of Life and My

45、 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

46、 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,

47、according to the level of humor, He thinks</p><p>　　In the article “The Source and Difference between Chinese and Western Humor” in Journal of Yangzhou Normal College, published in 2002, Peng Juan analyzes t

48、he 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 ou

49、t that the root causes for the differences between Chinese humour and the West humor are economic, political and cultural.</p><p>　　Among the 2004, one of an article, entitled Study of Verbal Humor Practice,

50、 Zhang Min first 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

51、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.</p><p&

52、gt;　　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

53、 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 h

54、umor from pragmatic, the thesis figures out the limitation of the CP and RT</p><p>　　3 A General Reflection on the Study of Humor</p><p>　　This chapter tries to explore the nature of humor from

55、 the comparisons of definition, taxonomy, origin and evolution of humor in English and Chinese. </p><p>　　3. 1 Definition of Humor</p><p>　　The term “humor” has its origin in the Latin word of t

56、he same spelling, which means “fluid” or “moisture”. Before the 1900s, many scholars believed that there were four basic bodily humors,which includes melancholy, choler, blood, and phlegm. A person who is normal and heal

57、thy 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 b

58、ody. T</p><p>　　From the above definitions and explanations, we can draw a conclusion of the nature of humor, which includes three aspects:</p><p>　　1. Humor is something funny or causing laught

59、er, designed to be comical or amusing, etc. </p><p>　　2. Humor is the way that stimulates people to think by causing them to laugh. </p><p>　　3. Humor can bring some cognition or some experience

60、 about mentality.</p><p>　　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 clai

61、m 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 hum

62、or is worthy of our efforts to study. And we will discuss it further in the following chapters.</p><p>　　3. 2 Types of Humor</p><p>　　Many scholars are like to classify the humor from different

63、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 concept

64、s 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 disclos

65、</p><p>　　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 d

66、escribe the funny things but also a source to produce humor, we call it a humor created by language. </p><p>　　3. 3 Linguistic Theory of Humor</p><p>　　Among the classical theories of humor, the

67、 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 laughter in every case is simple the sudden percept

68、ion of the incongruity between 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 t

69、hat amusement is a</p><p>　　In the era of Plato, linguistics is just a newcomer in this field, even though the study of humor has a long traditions. In Attardo’s words, twenty years ago, it would have been f

70、air 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

71、contrary, with the inspiration of the classical theory, the study of humor in the field of language h</p><p>　　As we all know, the incongruity theory always used something of absurd, unexpected and inappropr

72、iate 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 wri

73、tings of Kant and Schopenhauer. Kant claims that “l(fā)aughter is a feeling which is occured arising from the urgent expectation of a sudden transformation into nothing”. [3]</p><p>　　3. 4 Origin and Development

74、 of Humor in English and Chinese</p><p>　　This part tries to review the origin and development of humor in English and Chinese.</p><p>　　3. 4. 1 Origin of English humor</p><p>　　Fro

75、m 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

76、 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

77、origin of English humor. History records that the English</p><p>　　In 1682, The modern meaning of humor was established in Britain. And it was not until 1790 that Schivitz Brili firstly used the its modern m

78、eaning in his famous essay “the relations among sensitivity: On Freedom in Jokes and Humor”, which was one of the earliest writings on modern humor.</p><p>　　3. 4. 2 Origin of Chinese humor</p><p&

79、gt;　　Historical 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 “Fe

80、iyou” in history, who refers to the officials 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”.

81、 Once the king did something improper, then no one could directly</p><p>　　3. 4. 3 Development of English Humor</p><p>　　To understand the development of English humor, we have to pay attention

82、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

83、 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 back</p>&

84、lt;p>　　3. 4. 4 Development of Chinese Humor</p><p>　　The 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

85、 because this book is intented to satirize the society by applying exaggeration, humor and jests.</p><p>　　Ming and Qing Dynasties was an another blossom for Chinese humor. Apart from play, humor was used in

86、 many other kinds of literary works, such as short stories, prose, poem, etc. [4]</p><p>　　For a long time, the develop the humor means very much to Chinese people, and theory on humor is ignored. From 1980s

87、, not only the humor in China began to develop fleetly. The study and theory of humor becomes more diverse and goes deep into various fields and absorbs some foreign theories. Chinese scholars not only studying Chinese h

88、umor, but learning humor in other languages.</p><p>　　4 Linguistic Formation-mechanism of Humor in English and Chinese</p><p>　　Humor is everywhere. It is just like the seasoning in our food, m

89、aking 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 both as a humor stimulus

90、 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 sufficientl</

91、p><p>　　4. 1 Humor comes from divergence </p><p>　　If a language form (word, phrase or sentence) can be more than one way explained reasonably, then we call this language divergence language. Many

92、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, diverge

93、nce can resulting in misunderstanding; on the other hand, it is also conducive to the formation of verbal humor. Divergence is one of </p><p>　　4. 2 Humor Produced by Rhetoric</p><p>　　Western R

94、hetoric 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. I

95、n 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.</p><p>　　4. 3 Humor and Pragmatics</p><p>　　In the

96、previous sections, scholars and experts studied humor from different points of view. Then this section will examine mainly from the aspects of pragmatics.</p><p>　　4. 4 Linguistic Features of English and Ch

97、inese </p><p>　　There are all kinds of languages in our world. Some are similar to each other while others are quite different from each other. English and Chinese belongs to varied language families, and th

98、ey are distinct in many aspects.</p><p>　　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, a

99、nd 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 thinking mode emp