reading阅读与文化的关系

课程：阅读理论与技巧

How English Reading is affected by Cultural Knowledge

Introduction:

This paper will explore the affection of cultural knowledge to the English reading from the perspective of cross-cultural communication, trying to generalize the different type s of affection Chinese students meet in English reading, and then analyzes the causes and bring forth approaches and methods for reducing and clearing the affections.

Key words: English reading; cultural affection;

Cultural knowledge is one of the main affections in English reading for Chinese students. Cultural background knowledge plays a part in reading which draws more and more attention these years (Sun Zhangjing, 2008: o6; Xu Xuefen, 2004; Duanmu Yiwan, 1999: 03). So the research on the affection of cultural knowledge has important meaning on improving the reading ability and reading level, as well as on the general development of reading teaching.

1.what is the cultural knowledge affection

There are a dozen of definitions of cultural people have given. According to the need of foreign language teaching, Hu Wenzhong (1993:193) divided culture into two types: cultural knowledge information and cross-cultural communication. He figured out that cultural knowledge information is cultural factor which will not affect the Information transfer between two different people in different cultural background knowledge; cross-cultural knowledge is the factor which affects directly the language information transfer and non-language information transfer (misunderstanding and deviation). He also hold that cross-cultural communication plays more important part than cultural knowledge information in language teaching. In this paper, culture refers

to three levels culture: higher level culture, including philosophy, art, religion; Mass culture, such as customs, ceremony, basic necessities of life and relationship; Deep culture, including value of beauty and ugliness, time sense, circadian rhythm, the way of solving problem, gender, stratum, occupation and kinship.

2.The cultural knowledge affection and language

In order to identify and overcome the negative affection of cultural knowledge in English reading, it is necessary to category them. The category should be based on culture. Higher culture, mass culture and deep culture are both cultural knowledge information an cross-cultural knowledge, because they have effect on English reading.

Higher culture affection refers to the materials about philosophy, art, and religion and so on, when people read these kind of materials, they find that there is no similar or close thing in own culture, leading to misunderstanding and deviation. In daily association and oral communication, higher culture has no obvious effect, but in reading, readers often come across this kind of problem.

Mass culture affection is that when readers read the materials about customs, relationship, and ways of solving problem and so on, they will misunderstand the mass culture own or its way of occurring. This kind of affection appears in literature, advertisement, magazine, film intermediary, public readings and teaching materials about social culture.

Deep cultural often leads the understanding difficulty and error, such as what is beauty and justice in English country, while what is ugly and evil.Philosopher Thomas Hobbes had his representative viewpoint that beauty is what useful, beneficial and can let people happy. Under this direction, people in English country think that no matter what, no matter the thing is important or not, if they do, and they succeed, then it’s success. While for most Chinese people, officials and have success at learning are success. when it comes to the judge on value, English country people treat the puncturalit as important part of personal quality; they have specific time arrangement on meeting and date; they arrange and make time plans before visit, they stress efficiency. While in China, late for meeting or date are common, they visit

friends and relatives generally whenever they want and need. In English country, generally speaking, people use two ways to solve problem: peace talks and law. They spurn the way of quarrel and fight. However, in Chinese traditional culture, people solve problem through taking a roundabout way and finding relation.

In English country, female have many rights and freedom, for example, be respected and be cared about in job. Lady first when have a seat, female have many choices when they find job and no discrimination, such as white collar, blue collar, civil service, military officer, governor of a state, secretary of State, even the prime minister and queen. Communal facilities have special design for female, footstep armrest on the naval vessel, accommodation. But after marriage, female follow husband’s family name. In China, compared with male, female have less rights, freedom, and value approval, female suffer the discrimination when they find jobs, but they use their owns’ family name after they get marry. In English country, Britain has obvious rank of nobility, other countries have not such obvious stratum, the common people can be the prime minister, and the prime minister can be common people after leave his/her post. In Chinese culture, people are divided into three grades from high to low: cadre, worker and farmer. On the family ties, English country generally has two generations, after marriage, children move away from the family and set up own family, they value the independence more. While in China, three generations in a family that is normal, the relation within family members is closer, the older has more rights than the younger ones.

3.The types of cultural affection

In English reading, the affection of cultural knowledge and language can’t be divided, language is vector, language carries not only language information, but also cultural information. They interact with each other, in reading, the cultural information take more effect on the language information. Readers’ comprehension both benefits from the cultural information and restricted by cultural information.

“The vocabulary of a language often has its unique connotation.” (Hu Wenzhong, 1997:53) language is the product of culture and an important part of

cultural constituent, language can reflect its culture.

1). Affection of vocabulary

The first type of affection is vocabulary. V ocabulary is the basic element of language, also the brace of the language, so vocabulary reflect cultural differences directly and widely. Though parts of the English words have its corresponding meaning in Chinese words, readers in different level will not misunderstand in reading, but many English words have no specific corresponding meaning in Chinese, it’s called lexical gap, or English words have its corresp onding words in Chinese, but the cultural connotation can’t corr espond with the English meaning. English culture and Chinese culture both have long history and changes, national composition and social cuetoms are different, so the cultural differences are obvious. As the vector of language, the cultural differences are reflected in many aspects.

The first aspect is the vocabulary gap, many English words have no exact meaning in Chinese words. For example, the word privacy was explained as the state being away from others, alone and undisturbed in English. English cultural gives the high value on the word privacy, privacy is sacred and inviolable, people have high require and expectation on the emotion and mentality, the other members give enough understand and support to one’s privacy, it’s a norm in English country, in the school, business, even in love, between parents and children, however, in Chinese traditional culture, there is no such norm and value, especially within family. Therefore, even though Chinese students read something about privacy and private, even tho ugh they think about the intimacy, solitude, secret and not disturbed, they still hard to comprehend the real value meaning and emotional meaning, then lead to the difficulty to grasp the real meaning of the materials.

Secondly, there is many English words, that they have corresponding words in Chinese, but the two different social give them different meaning. In the other words, they have the same language meaning but not cultural meaning, even opposite. For example, English words clothes, dress, coat and jacket have the same corresponding word in Chinese: yifu. The word morning have longer time in English culture than in Chinese culture. The two different cultures give different cultural meaning in color,

astronomical phenomena and so on. The moon makes people think of dreariness and cold in English culture, while in Chinese culture, moon represents the good expectation and entrust. Red symbolizes danger in English culture, but happy, auspicious and authority in Chinese culture. The two different cultures have the same basic knowledge in some animal and plant, but have different emotional meaning. Dog means friendly, goodwill and sympathy, like love me, love my dog. Every dag has his day.However, Chinese Culture gives the dog negative meaning: low, degrading, and be a bully under the protection of a powerful person and so on. Association of political words is differ from the two different social cultures. Democracy means enjoy political democracy, often associated with personal right in English culture, while for Chinese people, democracy is a kind of ideal goal. In English countries, revolution associates with violence and bloody, while in China, revolution means right, represents advanced, lofty and holy.

2). Affection of phrase

Apart from the vocabulary, the phrase and allusion in the two cultures have many cultural differences. For example, the phrase end of the word comes from the Christian, it means one day, God will try all the people, let kind people in the heaven, bad people in region, so people had better to do good, don’t do rascality. However, it’s not so optimistic in china, generally speaking, Chinese people think that one day, the earth will be destroyed, and everything will be gone and no longer in existence.

3). Affection of sentence

The cultural affection in not just reflected on the vocabulary and phrase, also reflected on the sentence, including proverb and slang. Sometimes the words used and the language meanings are similar, but the sentence contains the cultural differences, so the sentence can lead the misunderstanding. For example: he is a professional; she is a professional.From the language level, the two sentences both refer to personal occupation, in fact, from the gender, social and region, former sentence means he is a vocational boxer, the second sentence means she is a prostitute. Slang is a part of culture, because of the different region and country, English slangs are vary and used in different ways. For example, the dialogue: A: Will you really come? B: Y ou kill me.

Readers may be confused, actually, B uses slang, the real meaning is that B: if I won’t go, you can kill me, in another words: I will be there.

4). Affection of text

The last affection is text, compared with Chinese text, English text has many differences, such as mode of thinking, the logical relation between sentences and sentences, between paragraph and paragraph, the utterances which show the temporal relation, spatial relation, comparison, transition, deduction and conclusion. Literary form and rhetoric are both expression ways and cultural thinking ways, but English text and Chinese text have different literary form and rhetoric, so the two factors becomes a kind of affection which misunderstand the readers. For example Chinese metaphor to 挥金如土, but English is to spend money like water, 水中捞月in Chinese, but to fish in the air in English,

From the four types of cultural affections mentioned above, on the on hand, the cultural knowledge affects the reading in every aspect. on the other hand, the language also offered ways to readers to reduce and clear the cultural affections in reading. The master of English culture and language will be helpful to improve the cognition of English culture, so that readers can understand the reading materials better.

4.How to reduce and clear the cultural affection

Language and culture interweave with each other, the difficulties Chinese readers meet in English reading are different levels and different aspects. Porter said that “the comprehension of the language is restricte d by specific cultural experience.” In order to improve the quality of English reading, we need not only master the language itself, but also need know and experience the culture. Only through know both the English language and English culture, can the affections in reading be reduce and even clear completely.

Firstly, we need build and strengthen cultural awareness, different level readers have different goals, for example, for the primary readers, the master of English language is the main goal, while for the advanced readers, English Culture is goal to achieve.

Secondly, we must pay attention to the comparison between English culture and Chinese cultural within cultural phenomenon and cultural connotation, find the similarities and differences to cultivate the sensitivity of cultural differences.

The last but not the least, the systematical learning of reading theory and practice is necessary, only the acknowledgement is promoted into systematical learning, can the learners use the knowledge more freely and efficiently. The foreign language department of CCNU has the reading theory and practice course, as I experienced and observed, the course is popular within students because of its serviceability and interestingness. Apart from this, teacher can recommend a list of book to readers to get to know the English non-language culture.

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