雅思练习总结（一）-CSDN博客

本文链接：https://blog.csdn.net/qq_48717745/article/details/145967578

雅思练习总结

1 文章原文及翻译

What’s so funny?

翻译：是什么如此如此有趣？

John McCrone reviews recent research on humour

翻译：John McCrone针对近期幽默情绪研究的综述

The joke comes over the headphones: ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The left.’ No, not funny. Try again. ‘Which side of a dog has the most hair? The outside.’ Hah! The punchline is silly yet fitting, tempting a smile, even a laugh. Laughter has always struck people as deeply mysterious, perhaps pointless. The writer Arthur Koestler dubbed it the luxury reflex: ‘unique in that it serves no apparent biological purpose’.

翻译：耳机里传来笑话：“狗哪边的毛最多？左边。”不，一点也不好笑。再说一遍。“狗哪边的毛最多？外面的那一面。”哈！这个笑话是有点冷，但相当贴切，让人忍俊不禁，甚至会让人捧腹大笑。欢笑这种情绪，总是给人一种神秘莫测，甚至云里雾里的感觉。作家亚瑟·库斯特勒称之为奢侈反射：“欢笑的独特之处在于它没有明显的生物学目的。”

Theories about humour have an ancient pedigree. Plato expressed the idea that humour is simply a delighted feeling of superiority over others. Kant and Freud felt that joke-telling relies on building up a psychic tension which is safely punctured by the ludicrousness of the punchline. But most modern humour theorists have settled on some version of Aristotle’s belief that jokes are based on a reaction to or resolution of incongruity, when the punchline is either a nonsense or, though appearing silly, has a clever second meaning.

翻译：关于幽默情绪的理论研究可谓源远流长。柏拉图认为，幽默情绪只是一种比别人优越的愉悦感。康德和弗洛伊德认为，讲笑话的关键在于：构建一种实际的紧张感，而这种紧张感可以通过无厘头的妙语来安然化解。但大多数现代幽默理论家都认同亚里士多德的观点，即笑话是基于对一种前言不搭后语的反应或解读，比如笑话从直接意思上看起来像是胡言乱语或者说傻兮兮的，但其弦外之音往往闪烁着智慧。

Graeme Ritchie, a computational linguist in Edinburgh, studies the linguistic structure of jokes in order to understand not only humour but language understanding and reasoning in machines. He says that while there is no single format for jokes, many revolve around a sudden and surprising conceptual shift. A comedian will present a situation followed by an unexpected interpretation that is also apt.

翻译：爱丁堡的计算语言学家格雷姆·里奇 (Graeme Ritchie) 研究笑话的语言结构，目的不仅是了解幽默情绪，还有计算机的语言理解和推理。他说，虽然笑话没有单一的模板，但很多笑话的内核都是急转直下的语义切换。一个比较恰当的类比是戏剧演员的表演模式，他们也会在营造出某个场景后，加之出人意料的解释来取乐观众。

So even if a punchline sounds silly, the listener can see there is a clever semantic fit and that sudden mental ‘Aha!’ is the buzz that makes us laugh. Viewed from this angle, humour is just a form of creative insight, a sudden leap to a new perspective.

翻译：因此，乍一听很傻的笑话，听众也会在理解笑点后，情不自禁地“啊哈！”地开心笑出来。从这个角度来看，幽默只是一种创造性洞察力，即从传统语义观点突然跳跃到讲笑话人观点之后产生的情绪。

However, there is another type of laughter, the laughter of social appeasement and it is important to understand this too. Play is a crucial part of development in most young mammals. Rats produce ultrasonic squeaks to prevent their scuffles turning nasty. Chimpanzees have a ‘play-face’ - a gaping expression accompanied by a panting ‘ah, ah’ noise. In humans, these signals have mutated into smiles and laughs. Researchers believe social situations, rather than cognitive events such as jokes, trigger these instinctual markers of play or appeasement. People laugh on fairground rides or when tickled to flag a play situation, whether they feel amused or not.

翻译：但除了抖机灵的笑话之外，对从众笑话的理解也很重要。玩耍是大多数幼年哺乳动物发育尤为关键。老鼠会发出超声波吱吱声，以防止打斗变得激烈。黑猩猩有一张“玩耍脸”——一种张大嘴巴的表情，伴随着喘息的“啊，啊”声。在人类中，这些认知事件已经变成了微笑和笑声。研究人员认为，是社交场合，而不是笑话等认知事件，触发了这些玩耍或安抚的本能标记。人们在游乐场的游乐设施上或被挠痒痒以示玩耍时都会大笑，无论他们是否真的觉得好笑。

Both social and cognitive types of laughter tap into the same expressive machinery in our brains, the emotion and motor circuits that produce smiles and excited vocalisations. However, if cognitive laughter is the product of more general thought processes, it should result from more expansive brain activity.

翻译：社交型和认知型笑声都利用了我们大脑中相同的表达机制，即产生微笑和兴奋声音的情绪和运动回路。然而，如果认知型笑声是更一般思维过程的产物，那么它应该来自更广泛的大脑活动。

Psychologist Vinod Goel investigated humour using the new technique of ‘single event’ functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). An MRI scanner uses magnetic fields and radio waves to track the changes in oxygenated blood that accompany mental activity. Until recently, MRI scanners needed several minutes of activity and so could not be used to track rapid thought processes such as comprehending a joke. New developments now allow half-second ‘snapshots’ of all sorts of reasoning and problem-solving activities.

翻译：心理学家 Vinod Goel 使用“单事件”功能性磁共振成像 (fMRI) 的新技术研究了欢乐情绪。MRI 扫描仪使用磁场和无线电波来跟踪伴随心理活动而来的含氧血液的变化。过去的 MRI 扫描仪需要数分钟的活动数据才能得到结果，因此无法用于跟踪快速的思维过程，例如理解笑话的那一小会儿。而现在新的技术允许对各种推理和解决问题的活动进行半秒“快照”式分析。

Although Goel felt being inside a brain scanner was hardly the ideal place for appreciating a joke, he found evidence that understanding a joke involves a widespread mental shift. His scans showed that at the beginning of a joke the listener’s prefrontal cortex lit up, particularly the right prefrontal believed to be critical for problem solving. But there was also activity in the temporal lobes at the side of the head (consistent with attempts to rouse stored knowledge) and in many other brain areas. Then when the punchline arrived, a new area sprang to life - the orbital prefrontal cortex. This patch of brain tucked behind the orbits of the eyes is associated with evaluating information.

翻译：尽管 Goel 认为大脑扫描仪并不是欣赏笑话的理想场所，但他发现理解笑话需要广泛的思维转换。扫描结果显示，在笑话开始时，听者的前额皮质会亮起来，尤其是被认为对问题求解尤为重要的右前额皮质。但头部一侧的颞叶（与试图唤醒储存的知识调用的区域一致）和许多其他大脑区域也有活动。然后，当笑话中的转折句出现时，一个新的区域开始活跃起来——眼眶前额皮质。这块位于眼眶后面的大脑区域与评估信息有关。

Making a rapid emotional assessment of the events of the moment is an extremely demanding job for the brain, animal or human. Energy and arousal levels may need to be retuned in the blink of an eye. These abrupt changes will produce either positive or negative feelings. The orbital cortex, the region that becomes active in Goel’s experiment, seems the best candidate for the site that feeds such feelings into higher-level thought processes, with its close connections to the brain’s sub-cortical arousal apparatus and centres of metabolic control.

翻译：对当下事件做出快速的情感分析，无论对动物或是人类的大脑来说，消耗都是巨大的。能量和唤醒水平可能需要在一眨眼的功夫重复调整。这些突然的变化会产生积极或消极的情绪。在 Goel 实验中呈现活跃状态的眼眶皮层区域，似乎就是将这些感觉输入更高层次思维过程的最佳候选区域，因为它与大脑皮层下唤醒装置和代谢控制中心有着密切的联系。

All warm-blooded animals make constant tiny adjustments in arousal in response to external events, but humans, who have developed a much more complicated internal life as a result of language, respond emotionally not only to their surroundings, but to their own thoughts. Whenever a sought-for answer snaps into place, there is a shudder of pleased recognition. Creative discovery being pleasurable, humans have learned to find ways of milking this natural response. The fact that jokes tap into our general evaluative machinery explains why the line between funny and disgusting, or funny and frightening, can be so fine. Whether a joke gives pleasure or pain depends on a person’s outlook.

翻译：所有温血动物的大脑都会根据外部事件，对大脑唤醒区域做出细微调整。而在语言的作用下，人类发展出了更为复杂的内心世界，他们不仅对周围环境，乃至自己的想法都会做出情绪反应。每当苦思冥想的答案乍现，都会激起一阵愉悦的情绪。创造性的发现可使人愉悦，而人类已经掌握了利用这种自然反应的方法，即笑话。笑话通过利用人的一般情绪评价机制这一事实，解释了欢愉情绪与恶心、恐惧这些情绪之间敬畏分明的原因。即笑话是给人带来快乐还是痛苦取决于个人的主观看法。

Humour may be a luxury, but the mechanism behind it is no evolutionary accident. As Peter Derks, a psychologist at William and Mary College in Virginia, says: ‘I like to think of humour as the distorted mirror of the mind. It’s creative, perceptual, analytical and lingual. If we can figure out how the mind processes humour, then we’ll have a pretty good handle on how it works in general.’

翻译：幽默情绪可能是一种奢侈，但其背后的机制并非进化的偶然。正如弗吉尼亚州威廉玛丽学院的心理学家 Peter Derks 所言：“我喜欢把幽默看作是心灵的一面哈哈镜。它具有创造性、感知性、分析性和口言语性。如果我们能弄清楚大脑如何处理幽默，那么我们就能很好地掌握大脑的一般工作原理。”

2 文章结构分析

这篇文章的结构还是比较清晰的：

第一段通过关于狗的笑话引出关于笑话、幽默情绪的讨论
第二段和第三段给出多位著名哲学家关于幽默情绪的讨论和科学家的研究，并给出了文章的核心论点：笑话能激发欢愉情绪就是因为其无厘头的特性，让理解的人能够产生，“哦哦，我懂了！”这种创造性的感觉。第四段是进一步距离进行阐释
第五段和第六段，引出了另一种笑话，即具有社交性质的从众笑话，就像猩猩的搞怪大笑动作，人在被挠了痒痒肉后，就算没觉得有什么，也会配合地笑一笑。第六段指出，两种笑话使用的是同一种情绪表达机制
第七段、第八段、第九段、第十段，都是基于Goel通过大脑扫描仪的实验展开的，第七段说的是使用了fMRI新技术，并指出笑话的作用时间很短。第八段谈了研究发现，笑话激发的脑部区域依次为：前额皮质、头部一侧的颞叶和很多其他区域，尤其是右前额皮质（笑话开始）、眼眶前额皮质（转折点出现）。第十段主要是说，对笑话做出反应这类快速情感分析，对脑补消耗比较大，而且眼眶皮层区域似乎不仅是情感新城的关键
第十段、第十一段，都是对实验结构的延伸。第十段主要是说，在语言的作用下，人发展出了对认知类笑话的反应。第十一段进行了升华，总结了幽默情绪的创造性、感知性、语言性的特点，并指出，对幽默情绪的研究也对大脑的一般工作原理研究有重要意义

文章整体结构如下