A Comparative Study Of Chinese & Western Food Cultures From A Cross-Cultural Communication Perspective

Food, an essential prerequisite for existence, plays an irreplaceable role in the development of society and in the progress of human beings, whether in ancient times or in modern times, and whether in East or in West. However, there is an old English saying "One man's meat is another man's poison", which means not all human beings have the same food or develop the same food habits. Clyde Kluckhohn, a world-famous anthropologist, states in his paper What is culture, "What he eats is of course limited by availability, but is also partly regulated by culture" (Kluckhohn, cited in Hu, 1990:39). That is, food remains a close relation with culture, for food culture varies with nations. Therefore, only within the context of each individual culture can food and food habits be best understood.There are great disparities between China and Western countries in ideas, attitudes, contents and functions of food cultures. Based on the theory of "the deep structure of culture" and "cultural relativism", this thesis endeavors to analyze the cultural differences and their rooted causes in Chinese and Western food cultures from the perspectives of concept, etiquette and content, and points out that with the development of cross-cultural communication, more factors and new variables in food cultures will arise through communication, interaction and imitation.Since a comparative study of Chinese & Western food cultures is a broad issue, what we have discussed in the thesis covers only a small part. Besides, food cultures concerned in the thesis are mainly confined within the Han nationality of China and America and Britain. However, this research, hopefully, will encourage a further study in this field.