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This book offers scholarly and accessible insights into how and why Chinese societies, past and present, approach humour in personal life and in the public sphere. It addresses the etymological difficulties of “humour” as a concept in Chinese language and understanding and explores connections and contrasts with Western “humour-styles”. Periods discussed range from earliest times to the beginning of the twentieth century, covering many different forms of humour, verbal, visual and behavioural. The book brings together internationally respected scholars in Chinese Studies with other specialists to explore humour through modes of enquiry in Cultural and political history, Linguistics, Literature, Drama and History and Philosophy of Science. The unifying focus of the book is humour and laughter in their multitudinous forms of expression in Chinese tradition and culture. Chapters vary in enquiry methods but are written (and fully annotated) in a common style designed to be accessible to the generalist reader as well as the specialist. The book will appeal to anyone taking an intelligent interest in China’s history and culture. Readers more generally interested in humour and laughter -- not well-understood forms of human behaviour -- will also find the book casts light on significant differences in their concepts and practice between cultures. This is a well-informed and scholarly book that will satisfy both specialist and non-specialist readers.

In support of these largely literary communication acts, some instances of actual \"irrelevant\" situational verbal exchanges are quoted from the author's personal experience, and other evidence has been garnered from contemporary political and business communication across various cultures. 1. The experience of the Han population during this dynasty so deeply scarred their psyche that Chinese people today are still alert to involuntary and ill-formed ostensive-inferential communications from any source and almost universally label them as hushuo. [...]the notion has been internalized that barbarian communication is wild, incomprehensible, and probably threatening so that dialogue is useless and indeed impossible. In this case, and in other instances to be cited below, it will be clear to the reader that this Theory is particularly applicable to cross-cultural exchanges, since the lack of reference points often entirely negates cooperation between speaker and hearer and the consequent pitfalls in communication block the possibility of communications producing physical or verbal responses. Raymond Firth notes, for instance, that while fist-shaking is a sign of aggression in European cultures, it indicates a warm welcome to strangers among tribes in northern Nigeria, a cross-cultural mishap that has given rise to apprehension and misunderstanding on the part of visiting anthropologists.2 Vocal delivery methods can also affect cross-cultural encounters, as Nicholas Harkness has noted in his fascinating study of the connections between the hygiene culture of modern Korea and vocal techniques of professional church singers.3 Some examples from cross-cultural encounters between Australia and China provided below also demonstrate the cogency of Irrelevance Theory in the interpretation of communication acts. 2.

Was there no humour or general concept of humour in China before 1923? That was when the Chinese writer, translator and inventor Lin Yutang 林語堂 (1895–1976) claimed that “orthodox Chinese literature did not allow for humorous expression, so the Chinese people did not understand the nature of humor and its function”.¹ Whileyoumo幽 默 is now standard usage in everyday Chinese, having replaced other earlier neologisms, what has happened to the faculty of “humorous expression” and its social functions since then? Did they emerge under Lin’s care and did they survive subsequent massive social changes intact, or were