German and Chinese Humour- a Comparison of German and Chinese Ethnic and Family Jokes

This thesis researched Chinese and German jokes, systematically compared them from several perspectives, and provided an answer to the question why people usually do not laugh when they hear jokes from other cultures. Based on Semantic Script Theory of Humour and General Theory of Verbal Humour, 1269 jokes collected from recently published books and websites were analysed from five independent perspectives: targets of joking, characters of what are being joked, the situation delineated by jokes, the narrative strategy of jokes, and the background knowledge for joke-understanding.The main results of the research are as follows: In Chinese ethnic jokes, targets of joking are only a dichotomy of Chinese and foreigners, while in German ethnic jokes, targets of joking are different ethnic units, such as Austrians, Scots, etc. The characters of what are being joked show a certain similarity in both cultures. Ethnic jokes are mainly about dumbness and stinginess. And family jokes deal more with authority and conflicts among family members. Situations delineated by jokes and narrative strategies are also influenced by cultures: German jokes prefer to relatively short forms, such as question-answer or one-liner, while Chinese jokes prefer to the story-form. People need more background knowledge about language and customs to understand Chinese jokes than to understand German jokes.The thesis strengthened the argument of the Semantic Script Theory of Humour that jokes are structured by the opposition of people's background knowledge and real occurrence in joke texts. This is the reason why people would not be amused by jokes from another culture, if they are unfamiliar with the language or customs in that culture