Humor

It’s essential for us to know something about humor before discussing Chinese and American humor. This chapter will introduce humor briefly mainly from the aspects of the definition and classifications of humor in Chinese and American culture. It also presents the relationship between humor and cross-cultural communication.

1.1 Definition of humor

Humor can be seen everywhere, such as in books or magazines, in the movies or on the television screen, on the Internet, in our daily communication, and even in the graffiti on walls. In a word, where there is human, there is humor. Then, what is humor? Until now there is no exact definition of humor satisfying to all fields because different scholars view humor from different standpoints according to their different research goals.

The term “humor” has a long history which derives from a Latin word “humere” of ancient Greece medicine with a meaning of “fluid”, “liquid” or “moisture”, having been defined as a physiological term. Hippocrates, who was called as the father of medicine, believed that humors were human bodies which comprised of four basic fluids: blood(spreading from the heart, embodying heat), phlegm(deriving from the brain, meaning cold), yellow bile(excreted by the liver, meaning dryness), and black bile(emitting from the spleen and stomach, representing moisture)(SHEN Dan 2006:4). It was believed that the mixture of these “humors” determined a person’s physical and mental qualities, as well as his mind, temperament, character and disposition and the proper proportion of the four fluids would make people well-humored.

For centuries, various scholars give their explanations on humor. Kant (1911:199) writes in Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, “Laughter is an action arising from a strained expectation being suddenly reduced to nothing”. He defines humor cognitively and considers that humor appears due to the dramatic contrast and the contradictory consequence. Apte (1985:14)，an American scholar on humor, conducts his research in the aspect of anthropology. He defines humor as an unconscious experience. And the external manifestations of the great joyfulness which expressed in smile or laughter are caused by the social and cultural reality. CHEN Xiaoying, who is regarded as the specialist in comedy and aesthetics of contemporary China considers that sense of humor is multi-layered (1989:109). According to Palmer, humor refers to everything which is actually or going to be interesting and the processes of the formation of joyfulness (Palmer 1994:3). GONG Weicai, a Chinese theorist on humor at present age, holds that “humor is formed with laughable feature artistically, and it presents a life attitude of adapting to the environment, and an expressive method of communication” (1993:16). LIN Yutang, a well-known writer first introducing humor to China, regards humor as “a method of viewing life”, “a point of view” and “a state of mind” (2000:65).

Not only do scholars express their different ideas, but also the dictionaries provide various definitions. Some definitions of humor chose from different dictionaries are as follows. In Longman Modern English Dictionary (1976:523), humor is “something which arouses amusement, laughter, etc., or the capacity for recognizing, reacting to or expressing something which is amusing, funny, etc.” In Longman Current English Dictionary (1978:551), humor is “the ability to be amused or the quality of causing amusement”. According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1988:345), humor is “the quality of being laughable or comical and the ability to perceive or express what is comical, witty, etc.” In Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1988:558), humor is “the capacity to cause or feel amusement”. According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (1997:1000), humor is “the quality in something that makes it funny or amusing and the ability to laugh at things that are amusing”. In Webster’s Dictionary of American English (1998:634), humor is “a funny, comic, or absurd quality causing amusement, or the ability or faculty of seeing and knowing what is amusing or comical and being able to express it or appreciate it”. Humor is “the ability of seeking comic factors in life and creating and reflecting them in art and an artistic method with major aesthetic features of relaxed, jeering and meaningful laughter” (《辞海》，1999:2236). Humor is funny or laughable but meaningful (《现代汉语词典》，1996:1520).

According to the definitions of humor, humor is supposed to cover two aspects. One is funny or causing amusement. The other is making people thinking about something with the hidden deep meaning.

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