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Visualizing the Knowledge Domain of Humor Processing: A Scientometric Review (2000-2016)

  • Guo Hanning

    Guo Hanning is Lecturer at School of International Education, Dalian University of Technology. Her research efforts have focused on scientometrics, teaching Chinese as a second language.

         and Wang Huili

    Wang Huili is Professor of English at Dalian University of Technology. Her research efforts have focused on verbal humor processing, embodied cognition and sentence processing.

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Published/Copyright: September 11, 2017
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Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics
From the journal Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics Volume 40 Issue 2

Abstract

The scientific literature of humor processing between 2000 and 2016 was reviewed by means of scientometric methods. The clustered and visualized document co-citation network of the humor processing knowledge domain was analyzed in terms of common topics and content of co-cited references. Emerging trends of humor processing were detected through reference citation bursts. The combined dataset of 816 bibliographic records and 42,687 references was compiled through a basic topic search. In order to ensure adequate coverage of the field, the search was expanded to include literature that referenced literature found in the initial basic topic search. Results produced a document co-citation network of humor processing with ten clusters, which showed that social cognition and fMRI study both served as important foundations for work in this knowledge domain. Personality studies in humor processing as well as research about the right hemisphere’s role in humor processing also received considerable attention. These key areas of study accounted for 4 clusters. The remaining six clusters included studies on sexual selection, figurative language, prejudice, facial expression, sleep deprivation and infant humor perception associated with the knowledge domain. In this study, burst detection in references revealed topics of high interest to researchers as well as emerging trends in humor processing research.

Keywords: humor processing; social cognition; brain mechanism; CiteSpace; scientometrics

* This work is supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (14ZDB155) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71603040).

About the authors

Guo Hanning

Guo Hanning is Lecturer at School of International Education, Dalian University of Technology. Her research efforts have focused on scientometrics, teaching Chinese as a second language.

Wang Huili

Wang Huili is Professor of English at Dalian University of Technology. Her research efforts have focused on verbal humor processing, embodied cognition and sentence processing.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the expert comments from the two anonymous reviewers and appreciate the meticulous editing from Liu Xiangdong, Steve Samuels and Ding Yanren.

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Published Online: 2017-9-11
Published in Print: 2017-6-27

© 2017 FLTRP, Walter de Gruyter, Cultural and Education Section British Embassy

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https://doi.org/10.1515/cjal-2017-0012
Keywords for this article
humor processing; social cognition; brain mechanism; CiteSpace; scientometrics

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Language Teaching
  3. English Language Curricula: A Comparison of University English Departments in a Chinese Province
  4. Language Teaching
  5. Teaching Large Classes in Chinese High Schools: What Do Teachers Say and Do?
  6. Language Teaching
  7. The Effects of Explicit Metapragmatic Instruction on Chinese English Language Learners’ Acquisition of Compliment Responses
  8. Second Language Acquisition
  9. The Influence of L2 on L1 Lexical Competence and Grammatical Properties in Written Expressions
  10. Language and Cognition
  11. Visualizing the Knowledge Domain of Humor Processing: A Scientometric Review (2000-2016)
  12. Testing and Assessment
  13. Factors Affecting Chinese Raters’ Rating of High-Stakes English Exam Essays
  15. Chinese Abstracts
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