chapterthree∶researchmethodologyanddatacollection(编辑修改稿)

chapterthree∶researchmethodologyanddatacollection(编辑修改稿)内容摘要：

bility and the Understanding of Verbal Humor…………………….57 Cultural Background and Humor………………………………………………..57 Culture and Positive Analysis on Data Collected from Questionnaires….……..58 Pragmatic Analysis of Reasons for the Effect of Cultural Background on the Understanding of Verbal Humor……………… ……………60 Macropragmatic Interpretation of Humor and Culture………………….……..61 Summary…………………………………………………………………………..64 Chapter Five: Conclusion…………………………………………………………65 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………..67 12 Chapter One: A Historical Survey of Humor Definitions of Humor Humor is almost everywhere. We can find humor in our conversations, in the movies, on televisions, in books, newspapers and magazines, on the radios, etc. There is nowhere that has not been filled with humor and there is no field, where it be sex, marriage, education background, work, family, politics, religion, nationality—any field you name it —that has not been ridiculed. Throughout the centuries, humor has been a topic that attracts the attention and interest of the researchers in various fields, from Aristotle and Kant to Bergson(1928:4260) and Freud(1905:3851), and it will always be a topic as such. What is humor, exactly? The question seems pointless—because we can all think of examples of humor, and we all know it when we see it. However, when we try to define exactly what does and does not count as humor, or how humor operates, we find it quite difficult. Many linguists, rhetoricians, lexicographers, philosophers, and scholars have given various definitions of humor. According to The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (1997:495), humor means moisture, especially, the moisture or fluid of animal bodies, as the chyle, lymph, etc.。 as the humors of the eye, etc.amp。 hand。 it also refers to the form of entertainment and a form of human munication, intended to make people laugh and feel happy. The origins of the word are in the humorous medicine of the ancient Greeks. Ancient physicians believed that there were four humors (the blood, phlegm, yellow bile or choler, and black bile or melancholy), on the relative proportion of which the temperament and health depended. It even could refer to a vitiated or morbid animal fluid, which might often cause an eruption on the skin. In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, humor reflects the satisfied feeling of people who laugh at themselves as well as the social structure created by themselves. People have different explanations of humor. The simplest definition is: humor refers to all funny things. 13 According to 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. In Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1988:558), humor is the capacity to cause or feel amusement. In The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1980:345), humor is the quality of being laughable or ical and the ability to perceive or express what is ical, witty, etc. In Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1998:921), the definition of humor is: a. (the ability to understand and enjoy) what is funny and makes people laugh。 b. the quality of causing amusement。 c. a state of mind。 mood。 d. any of four liquids which were formerly thought to be present character. In Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1981:716, Massachusetts, USA), humor is defined as: a. That quality in a happening, an action, a situation or an expression of ideas which appeals to a sense of the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous. b. The mental faculty of discovering, expressing or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous elements in ideas, situations, happenings or acts. c. Something that is designed to be ical or amusing. Definitions might be different, but we can still find something in mon: to be laughable or amusing seems to be the essence of humor. Like the blind men touching different parts of the elephant, the above definitions have onesided view of humor. Each definition only points out the essence of humor partly from one certain perspective. And no humor theorist can claim his explanation is exactly perfect. But it is ―universally acknowledged that the nature of humor is plex and multifaceted and it is simply not possible at this time to develop a single broad theory that satisfactorily accounts for several key qualities of humor simultaneously‖ (McGhee, 1979:2). In Modern Chinese Dictionary（现代汉语词典） (2020:1395), humor means something (usually talking and behavior) interesting and having deep meaning. According to Dr Liao Chaozhi who works in the Department of Foreign Language 14 and Literature of National University of Gaoxiong of Taiwan, humor should be able to trigger thoughtful smiles (not laughter) because correlation between humor and smile is bigger than that between humor and laughter. Smile of the meeting of hearts is sophisticated, while the American humor of belly laugh is shallow (Kao 1974。 Raskin 2020). People laugh for many things, for examples, funny behavior, bizzar facial expression and etc, but only those which make people think deeply can be regarded as humor. It is a fact that humor usually causes laugh. Different ideas on the issue ―what humor is‖ may hold or be valid only within certain specific field, not necessarily within all disciplines. Therefore, humor is supposed to satisfy two basic conditions (1) funny or laughcausing。 (2) having deep meaning or making people think about something. These two points are necessary but not alternative, which means that the two points must be included in one humor at the same time. I。