Summary: Humor is a wonderful work of human civilization and wisdom, she smiled as a bridge, bond people in different culture, and made people recognizing the power of the humor in their normal communication. This paper will trace the historical origins of humor. From the humorous discourse features, themes, social functions, performance practices and seize of the subtle to start the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western humor.
Humor is a wonderful work of human civilization and wisdom, she smiled as a bridge, bond people in different culture, and made people recognizing the power of the humor in their normal communication.
1. Origins and scopes of humor
Humor comes from the Latin word ‘humor’, it is an ancient Greek physiology term refers to the ‘fluid’. Greek physician Hippocrates believed that the human health and temperament of different types of four kinds of body fluids on the mixing ratio. Temperament theory in ancient Greece, medieval and Renaissance have a great impact. Thus, humor is the original meaning of four kinds of body fluids determined by the proportion of the human mind, body, customary tendency, temperament, or temporary mental and emotions. The first of the humor into the field of aesthetics is a famous British dramatist, Ben Jones, gradually dilute the meaning of humor physiology, aesthetics increasingly in-depth the study of humor. Late in the 17th century, humor began to have the modern meaning; In the 18th century, humor for the aesthetic features of drama, fiction, poetry, prose and writing style with humor for the writers and artists have been common. When the humor of the world as a popular aesthetic categories, they become asymbol of wisdom and beauty.
Although humor is a foreign word, but the Chinese people's sense of humor has a long history as the history of the Chinese nation. Fable thinkers in ancient China, private jokes are all contain deep