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humor through language are closely related with language humor. In this thesis, it is defined as speeches or writings with the ability to cause amusement in receptors. Thus all the languages, in written or spoken form, that can elicit amusement is listed as humorous language. Actually one can encounter humorous language in various styles, such as novels, essays, proverbs, short stories and jokes, etc. In truth, English and Chinese, though respectively belonging to two completely different language systems, share interesting similarities in some humor-creating linguistic devices. This chapter mainly focuses on the commonalities between humorous English and Chinese in terms of language-created humor.
2.1.1 Humor Created by Figures of Speech
“By figures of speech we refer here to those rhetorical devices termed tropes in classical rhetoric. Tropes have to do with the way words are made to mean other than what they would normally imply, and therefore involve deviation from the ordinary and literal meaning of words.”
Figures of speech are an important means for humor production, in English and Chinese alike. Furthermore, some humor-creating figures of speech correspond roughly between English and Chinese. Though they are all expressed by some figures of speech, but they are all untranslatable. That is to say if we don not know these two languages we won’t understand the humorous elements in the sentences. From the two languages we can go deep into their cultures.
2.1.1.1 Pun
According to the Webster’s New World Dictionary, “Pun is the humorous use of a word or of words which are formed or sounded alike but have different meanings, in such a way as to play on two or more of the possible applications”. There are two types of puns, one is homophone that combines two words with different meanings and spellings but which sound alike, for example:
(1) “Who’s calling?” was the answer to the telephone.
“Watt.”
“What’s your name, please?”
“Watt’s my name.”
“That’s what I asked you. What’s your name?”
“That’s what I told you. Watt’s my name?”
A long pause, and then, from Watt, “is this James Brown?”
“No, this is Knott”
“Please tell me your name.”
“Will Knott”
Where upon they both hung up.
In this joke the funny misunderstanding between Mr. Watt and Mr. Knott arose from the homophones of their names, “what” and “not”.
And the other is homograph that employs a word or words with two or more meanings. The multiple meanings are represented by the same word, spelled the same way. For example:
(2)“If I lay one egg on this chair and two on the table, how many will I have all together?”

“Personally I don’t believe you can do it.” 

Here the word “lay” is a homograph. For the first speaker, the expression “to lay eggs” is equal to “to put eggs”. However, the second took it for another legitimate meaning “to produce eggs”. It is the homograph that causes humor.
Pun as a figure of speech in Chinese is the intentional use of a word or sentence which has two meanings in the same context. The two figures of speech have similar use in that both involve using a word to suggest two or more meanings or different associations. Pun can also be classified into two categories: homophonic puns and homographic puns whose uses correspond with the above two types of pun respectively. For example:
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