摘要：

幽默在人们的生活中有着非常重要的作用。它能给人们带来欢乐，减轻忧虑和压力。正因为幽默的重要作用，它在各方面都被广泛应用。然而，由于不同的文化差异，中国幽默和英语幽默存在差异。一个国家中被认为有趣的事在另一个国家就会被认为没有意义或者被误解。因此我们需要了解其中的差异以便可以更好地领悟幽默。本文比较了中西方幽默的差异并分析了原因。研究表明中西方幽默在源流，内容，作用功效，技巧和表现手法和产生方式等方面存在差异。不同的价值观，思维方式，社会体系和文化背景是造成这些差异的重要原因。

关键词：中西方幽默 差异 原因

Abstract:

Humor plays a significant role in people’s daily life. It can make us happy and relieve our anxiety and stress. It is just because of its functions that humor is widely used in many aspects. However, due to different culture background, Chinese humor is different from English humor. What is thought funny in one culture might be considered nonsense or misunderstood in another. Thus we need to know the differences so as to appreciate the humor better. By using the comparative and descriptive approaches, this thesis makes contrasts between Chinese and English humor in many aspects such as origin, content, function, skills, technique and the way of producing. Diverse social values, different thought patterns, different social systems and culture background all account for these distinction.

Key words: Chinese and English humor ; differences; causes

1. Introduction
    Humor is an active part both of written language and oral presentation. As a kind of special linguistic art, it is applied widely in literary works and films and TV works. With foreign communication becoming more and more popular, people begin to realize that if they want to understand the humor in English, only mastering the accurate grammar structure and rich vocabulary are not enough. Because of cultural and linguistic differences, Chinese humor and English humor have formed their own styles, which will be a big obstacle to target language reader to comprehend exactly the deep meaning of humor in English and will easily lead to misreading.