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nt of the comedy skits,which can be satisfied by resonance in dialogic syntax. And as for resonance, whichis a new kind of cognitive method, there is great need for new approaches to find outits cognitive functions. And in the present thesis, the author uses ECM as the maintheory, with resonance as the supportive tool, aiming to make a unified explanationto the cognitive mechanism of humor in comedy skits, which can help people have afurther understanding of the practical use of resonance, and the thesis also bears thehope that a new approach can be found for people to interpret humor.So the thesis undertakes the following goals.Firstly, the thesis is designed to explore the cognitive mechanism of humor incomedy skits in light of the proposed model ECM+ which is dedicated to presenting adynamic and real-time analysis of the production process of humor which provides anew perspective for humor study.Secondly, through analyzing the way resonance is used by comedy skit playersin generating humor, this thesis attempts to find out how resonance can be used inpeople’s communication as a strategy and to enrich its explanatory power to a certainextent so as to promote the development of the theory of dialogic syntaxThirdly, the study about the cognitive mechanism of humor helps people tounderstand and create humor better so that they can deal with the embarrassmentespecially when they are faced with some awkward situations.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review

As an indispensable part of life, humor plays an essential function in people’sdaily life. In this chapter, the author reviews the previous literature in the followingfour parts. In the first part, the author makes an introduction of the definition ofhumor. In the second part, the author introduces the previous studies about humorfrom the perspectives of traditional studies and modern linguistic studies. And thenext part concerns the previous studies on dialogic syntax. And finally comes a briefsummary of the chapter.

2.1 Definition of Humor
As a heated topic, humor has been defined from different angles. But so far, nota precise definition has been reached. And before the author reviews the previousdefinitions, the author will present the etymology and evolution of humor at the verybeginning of this part.“Humor” is a term originating from the Latin word “(h)umor” which means“fluid” or “moisture”. According to Hippocrates, humor was believed to be one ofthe four fluids, namely, blood (coming from the heart, representing heat), phlegm(originating in the brain, representing cold), choler (yellow bile, secreted by liver,representing dryness), and melancholy (black bile, emanating from the spleen andstomach, representing moisture).Later, still as a technical term, it entered into middle English through Frenchwith association with the theory of temperament (Ruch, 1998, p. 7). People at thattime believed that people’s physical appearance, mentality, character andtemperament are determined by the different proportions of the four humors.Optically, the four humors are at a balanced state, but the predominance of each ofthem will lead to the sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic temperament.That is to say, if a person is balanced in the four humors, he is in good humor, but theunbalance resulted from anyone of the four humors indicates that the person is in badhumor.At the end of the 16thcentury, the meaning of humor was expanded w