Question

What is it that makes people laugh? More than two thousand years ago the ancient Greek philosopher (哲学家) Aristotle defined (定义) jokes as the pleasure that results from a feeling of triumph by showing we’re better than someone else in a certain way. According to Aristotle and many other philosophers，all jokes depend mainly on showing inferiority in another person or group of persons — that is，putting it clearly，on showing that they are worse off than ourselves. Jokes raise our good opinion of ourselves at someone else’s expense.

    Showing how much better than other people we are is only one reason we like jokes. Someone may also use a joke to express their anger or their cruelty （残酷）or any other kind of action that is not acceptable to us. We feel free to laugh when we hear about someone sliding on a banana skin. The joke lets us express those attitudes which are usually unacceptable to society. This is probably the reason why some of the jokes，especially those involving cruelty，are so popular with certain people.

    Besides，all jokes depend on our enjoyment of laughing at something that is strange and out of place because it’s different from things which are happening around it. The same situation can be either sad or pleasant，depending entirely on how strange and out of place it is. If a girl in a bathing suit falls into a swimming pool，we don’t laugh because nothing unusual has happened. But if a man in a smart suit falls in，the situation is at once unusual in a pleasant way and we laugh. A good joke-teller will always try to build up a situation in which one thing is expected until something unexpected suddenly happens，and so we laugh.

1.The underlined word “inferiority” (in Paragraph 1) means ______.

A．someone that is better than someone else

B．something that is better than something else

C．someone that is as good as someone else

D．something that is not as good as something else

2.According to Aristotle, all jokes depend mainly on ______.

A．resulting in a sense of success

B．showing inferiority in another person or group

C．having a good opinion of other people

D．making people laugh unexpectedly

3.What’s the main idea of Paragraph 2?

A．To express those attitudes usually unacceptable to society is one of the reasons we like jokes.

B．When people are angry, they would like to hear jokes.

C．People who like jokes are usually cruel.

D．Showing we are better than other people is the only one reason we like jokes.

4.What will a good joke-teller always try to do? 

A．Make an unexpected thing happen in an expected situation

B．Make different things happen at the same time. 

C．Make a sad situation into a pleasant one.   

D．Make people laugh at something unusual and out of place.

Answer

1.D

2.B

3.A

4.A

【解析】 略