摘　要

在日常生活中，幽默无处不在。它是广大人民须臾可不缺少的部分，是一个饱含智慧和情趣的领域。幽默已经渗透整个社会生活，并发挥着作用。它内容丰富，形式多样。由于各语言文化背景的不同，幽默交流的习俗会有很大的差异。因此本文选取中英两种语言中的幽默语料，在文化的理论框架下，对中英幽默的差异进行了分析，并尝试阐述了造成中英幽默的文化根源。文化对语言的影响极其深远，关注语言背后的文化，是成功完成跨文化交际必不可少的前提。
本文希望通过对中英幽默的对比，理解中英幽默的差异及其丰富的文化内涵；通过对造成英汉幽默言语差异的文化根源的探索，帮助扫除幽默理解障碍，增强中英文化意识，提高跨文化交际能力。
 
关键词：文化；差异；汉语幽默；英语幽默
 
Abstract

Humor exists in every aspect of our daily life. It is an essential part in ordinary people’s life and is a bursting memorable and fascinating area full of wisdom and interest. It has played and is laying an important role in our social life, in various human interactions and especially in jokes and humorous styles. The humor customs are different owing to different cultures of languages. The thesis selects humorous examples in English and Chinese, analyzes differences in English humor and Chinese humor from the perspective of culture, and then explores the causes rooted in cultures. Culture has a great influence on the language, thus, understanding of the culture is a necessity to succeeding in intercultural communication.
The thesis aims to help understanding the differences and cultural connotations of the humors through contrast of English humor with Chinese humor. The thesis is intended to be helpful in elimination of comprehensive obstacles of humor, enhancement of cultural consciousness and improvement of intercultural communication competence.

Key words: culture; differences; Chinese humor; English humor

1 Introduction
With the development of globalization, international communication becomes one part of political, economic and cultural life. Humor plays an important part in intercultural communication and interaction, which can imply the interpersonal relationship, values, thinking mode in culture. Humor universally exists in all languages with its special functions, thus it has an significant research value. However there are obstacles in understanding the humors in foreign languages. In order to overcome the barriers in humor comprehension, it is necessary to conduct contrastive analysis of English and Chinese humor from the perspective of cultural context, which is favorable to realize and comprehend humorous differences between two languages so as to avoid misunderstanding and conflict in intercultural communication.