英美文化差异论文

The different culture language communication

between Chinese and English

For human beings, language is the important communication tool, the major method for transferring information and exchanging emotion. In my viewpoint, cross-cultural communication reflects cultural differences between Chinese and English. Now I will take some examples of the human communication in several different aspects.

First of all, I would like to mention their method of inquiry. For instance, in a store, the Chinese salesmen would ask the customers “what do you want to buy?” while the English would say the words like “what can I do for you?”. When answering a phone call, Chinese customarily say “Hello, who are you please.”and “Hello, this is Jim speaking.” is the most common answer in English countries. Do you notice the subject “you” and “I”, “this” among two examples?

According to typical examples above, we can infer that the difference in person may also reflect some cultural differences in communication. Someone believes that Chinese are aler to strangers so they automatically use the subject “you” to inquire about others. In my opinion, since Chinese had been influenced by traditional Confucian thoughts, they tend to consider others first unconsciously, which means to show their respects. As for the English,the first one to consider is themselves. This case indicates from a certain aspect that the English

even the whole western people more like to think from their own conditions, but do not mean that they are selfish .In the contrary, It show us that the western people are human with extreme self-consciousness.

Secondly, in relative appellation part, there are tremendous distinction between Chinese and English. English always take their family as centre and each generation has their own specific appellation. In order to completely show the equality of the sexes, the English just distinguish males and females. They don’t care or even ignore the distinction of appellation which is caused by the different sex. But, Chinese traditional cultures deeply cause the sexual preference. Chinese people think highly of boys and think little of the perspective of the equality of males and females, which directly lead to the tremendous difference and partly effect the cross-cultural communication.

Thirdly, as far as the language of greeting or talking with people is concerned, the Chinese greet or talk with people depends on others’situation or motivation. For example, “where do you want to go?”or “how old are you?” But in English, they think these belong to personal affairs. It is impolite, even rude, to ask their family, incomes, or ages, which is quite common in China. In English part, the most common thing is that they talk about is the weather or inquire your recent situation. For instance,“it’s a lovely day, isn’t it?” , “how are you?”Meanwhile, the

address is the linguistic expression of the relationships between communication participants. For English, they always use “Mr.”“Miss”and “Mrs.”to show their respects for strangers, while Chinese use permanent name that depend on strangers’ ages. According this, we can make a conclusion that the greeting language in English is more approachable and comfortable.

Then, as we all know, a compliment is kind of linguistic communication which inessential to human being. When facing the compliment, there are different attitude and action between Chinese and English. Generally speaking, being modest and careful is the traditional virtue in China and the attitude of Chinese is refusal when they gain others’flatter or encouragement. For instance, when you say “your English is excellent.” the Chinese answer mostly will be “just so-so”. But, there is quite different from English. English must express greatness for their compliment and must represent the strong relief about self-improvement and self-confident. For example, when you say “you speak a good French”, the English answer must be “thanks”or “thank you”. In the dinner, if you say “it’s a wonderful fish.” the English host would answer like “I am glad you like it”. Therefore, you mustn’t say “no, I don’t think so” when English people praise you. Because this answer is rude, even hypocritical in western eyes.

Finally, let me say something about accepting gift. When festivals is

coming, relatives or friends or classmates would send you gifts. What about the different reaction between Chinese and English? In China, before people accept presents they would like to say something euphemistic to refuse them. After accepting, they will let them aside and open them after the guest’s leaving. However, English people have the opposite reaction. English will be very happy when they can accept gifts and they will open it in front of the customers with “what a wonderful gift” or “ thank you for your present”. The way that people accept gifts illustrate that the traditional custom influence people’s behavior and routine. Day after day, it becomes form and people just know to inherit it.

Based on the analysis above,we can easily find out that the English are sincerely and frankly while implication is an important phenomenon in Chinese language communication. The language communication mentioned above all have their merits and defects, Both of them have no discrimina-tion in good and bad. In a word, all these differences improve the cross-cultural communication. Learn from the differences between Chinese and English is good to develop new ways to communicate, not only the cultural communication, but the economical and political communication. On the other hand, these differences can influence other aspects, not only the communication. Like the vocation, the job, the humanity and so on.