摘 要

幽默是一种常见且具有鲜明文化特征的艺术形式。它表达一种观点，一种对人生的看法，通过诙谐或是讽刺的语言形式反映人类文明和智慧，使人们在感到愉悦的同时深受启迪。对于外族学习者或跨文化交际者来说，理解言语幽默的字面意义并不难，可是，由于文化背景不同，在交际过程中他们往往结合本国的文化背景曲解带有异国特色的言语幽默，从而大大削弱原幽默文化语言的效果。因此，理解言语幽默就不能不考虑社会文化因素。
中国的《爱情公寓》和美国的《老友记》这两部情景喜剧均以都市男女的生活为背景，有相似的故事主角，相似的生活环境，相似的主题并能反映中西方各自社会文化特点、内涵，因此本论文从跨文化交际这一角度出发，对两部喜剧中的言语幽默进行收集、分类、对比分析，找出英汉言语幽默的相同点及差异，进而探究引起英汉言语幽默差异的文化社会根源，目的是借助对英汉言语幽默的分析，加深人们对中西方文化的进一步了解，让不同国家，不同种族的人们都能分享到言语幽默给人们带来的欢笑和愉悦，从而促进跨文化交际的顺利进行。  

关键词：言语幽默， 情景喜剧，跨文化交际
 
Abstract

Humor, a common and culturally characterized art form, expresses a view of life through a humorous or ironic language form. It reflects the human civilization and wisdom, makes people feel cheerful and endows human deep enlightenment. For foreign learners or cross-cultural communication speakers, the literal meaning of a humor may not be an obstacle. However, because of different culture backgrounds, they probably feel confused about the inner meaning of a humor, which may greatly weaken the original humorous language effect. Therefore, for the sake of an in-death understanding of English and Chinese humor, this study compares and analyzes two situational comedies: Friends and Ai Qing Gong Yu. Because the two are both sitcoms, the characters are a group of youth who are close friends living in the same apartment and the content are what happens in their daily life. Generally speaking, they have similar settings. Through comparison and analysis, we can get a further understanding of foreign humor and promote the cross-cultural communication.

Keywords: verbal humor, sitcoms, cross-cultural communication

Chapter 1 Introduction
Human’s life is boring and meaningless without laughter thus humor is not omissible in daily life for it bringing laughter to people and enriching both their language and culture. It expresses a view of life through a humorous or ironic language form. It reflects the human civilization and wisdom, makes people feel cheerful and endows human deep enlightenment. For foreign learners or cross-cultural communication speakers, the literal meaning of a humor may not be an obstacle. However, because of different culture backgrounds, they probably feel confused about the inner meaning of a humor, which may greatly weaken the original humorous language effect. Therefore, for the sake of an in-death understanding of English and Chinese humor, this study compares and analyzes two situational comedies: Friends and Ai Qing Gong Yu.