Volume 20, Issue 3

This research compares the structure and correlates of the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) and Coping Humor Scale (CHS) in the Chinese context with those of Canadian samples. Chinese translations of the HSQ, CHS, and Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90) were administered to 354 Chinese university students (M = 23.4 years of age, SD = 3.6). As in the original Canadian samples, four humor factors were found in the HSQ: Affliative, Self-enhancing, Aggressive, and Self-defeating humor, and one factor was found in the CHS. The HSQ and CHS scale reliabilities in the Chinese sample were generally acceptable. Chinese participants, as compared to Canadian norms, reported significantly lower scores on the HSQ subscales and CHS, particularly on Aggressive humor. No significant gender differences were found on the four HSQ subscales in the Chinese sample, whereas Canadian males reported more use of Aggressive and Self-defeating humor than did females. Although no gender difference was found on Coping humor in the Canadian samples, Chinese males had significantly higher scores on this scale than did females. In both the Chinese and Canadian samples, younger participants reported more use of Affliative and Aggressive humor than did older ones. Affliative, Self-enhancing, and Coping humor were negatively correlated, while Aggressive and Selfdefeating humor were positively correlated with the subscales and General Symptomatic Index of the SCL-90. Regression results indicated that mental health is more strongly related to Self-enhancing, Self-defeating, and Coping humor than Affliative and Aggressive humor. Overall, the findings support the theoretical structure and usefulness of the HSQ and CHS in the Chinese context.

This paper proposes a cognitive model for processing humor in puns written in kanji (logographs) and kana (phonographs) in kyoka. Kyoka is a genre of playful Japanese poetry, and it characteristically employs puns for language play and humor. This study shows how kyoka poets manipulate the use of kanji and kana orthography to trick their readers in different ways, directing readers to different processing routes of kanji and kana puns. Kanji puns offer direct access to one particular meaning, and the discovery of another hidden meaning is a surprise. Kana puns, on the other hand, produce semantic ambiguity, and the discovery of the two meanings results from an appreciation of their incompatibility. This study adds a visual aspect to the sound aspect of puns, and demonstrates ways in which cultural resources affect their processing.

This paper analyzes some jokes in Thai, which is an isolating language. The focus of this paper is on a linguistic construction, which has high potential for structural ambiguities in Thai, that is, noun compound. The result of this study shows that they are a good resource for constructing two types of ambiguities in Thai jokes: case relation ambiguity, which is the ambiguity of surface realization of case relation, in which a noun or noun phrase can have more than one semantic role, and class ambiguity, which is an ambiguity that causes one word class to be mistaken for another class. As researches on puns in non-inflectional languages are rarely talked of in relation to others, this work might shed light on the study of puns from a new perspective.

The Chinese term youmo for humor is a translated neologism in modern Chinese. It was Lin Yutang who first coined the term in 1924 and introduced and promoted the idea of humor into Chinese culture. Lin's translating ‘humor’ into youmo was a conscious cross-cultural act that mediates and appropriates cultural meaning between East and West. By way of cross-cultural translation, ‘humor’ as youmo takes on a multicultural meaning which not only enriches the notion of humor but also offers an aesthetic alternative to Chinese modernity through creative transformation of Chinese cultural tradition. After recognizing the Western reference of youmo , especially George Meredith's notion of the “comic spirit,” I will show how youmo intends to find a middle ground for Chinese modernity in which Chinese literature and culture can shake off shackles of moral pomposity while still maintaining a gentlemanly style or taste. The primary means for Lin to achieve that purpose is to re-interpret traditional Chinese culture, both Taoist and Confucianist, along humorous lines. And it is in such cross-cultural interaction that Lin Yutang developed his philosophical notion of youmo as “tolerant irony” based on the Taoist ironical stance towards life as well as the Confucian “Spirit of Reasonableness.”

This paper focuses on the dilemma facing a translator if (s)he attempts to translate cartoons in general, with special reference to the translation of Egyptian cartoons into English. The dilemma is perceived to be threefold: the translator has to cope with the cultural distinctiveness of the cartoons; to interpret the double scripts expressed in the linguistic component; and finally to resolve the nonverbal and/or semiotic cues of the drawings and relate them to the incongruity expressed in the two scripts. The objective of this study is, thus, to propose a model that is based on Attardo and Raskin's General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH 1991); and theories of functional translation, such as Nord's (1991 [1988] and 1997), Reiss's (2000 [1971]), Baker's (1992) and others. The GTVH model, in other words, is adapted to be applicable to the semiotic interpretation and translation of cartoons. In the end, the study implicates using the translation of cartoons as an application of contrastive methodology in the AFL (Teaching Arabic as a Foreign language), the EFL/ESL, and in the Translation and Pragmatics classes.

Dianna C. Niebylski: Humoring Resistance: Laughter and the Excessive Body in Latin American Women's Fiction . Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. 193 pp. $45.00 (Lisa Colletta) Leon Rappoport: Punchlines: The Case for Racial, Ethnic and Gender Humor . Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2005. 181 pp. $44.95. (Christie Davies) Chao-chih Liao: Taiwanese Perceptions of Humor: A Sociolinguistic Perspective . Taipei, Taiwan: Crane, 2002. 295 pp. NT $375.00 U.S. $12.00. (Joseph C. Sample) Ibn al-Jawzî: Il sale nella pentola. Storie arabe di sciocchi e di folli [Salt in the pot: Arabic stories of fools and crazy people], Rosanna Budelli (ed. and trans.). Turin: Il Leone Verde. 140 pp. €10.50. (Salvatore Attardo)