A Contrastive Study On English And Chinese Bumper Stickers

With the increasing popularity of private cars, bumper stickers have emerged inChina. Bumper sticker, as a kind of slogan, is not only a linguistic phenomenon but alsoa cultural phenomenon. Therefore, it is of great significance of research on bumperstickers. Domestic researches on bumper stickers are mainly about the classifications ofthem or analyses from the perspective of humor, while the studies about bumper stickersabroad are relatively thorough and in-depth, which are done from the perspectives ofpragmatics, psychology and sociolinguistics etc. However, most of previous studies aredone in single language such as Chinese or English, while contrastive studies onEnglish and Chinese bumper stickers are relatively limited. With the increasing need ofcross-cultural communication, the understandings between different cultures play moreand more important roles. The contrastive research on English and Chinese bumperstickers can be helpful to our understanding of domestic and foreign automobilecultures, which in turn improves cross-cultural communication.This paper makes a contrastive analysis on English and Chinese bumper stickersfrom the perspectives of culture and pragmatics. Firstly, the origin, definition,classification, function and characteristics of bumper stickers are illustrated. Then theprevious researches on bumper stickers both in and out of China have been discussed.Secondly, a contrastive study of English and Chinese bumper stickers from theperspectives of cultural dependence and pragmatics has been made. The author hasstudied the dependence of English and Chinese bumper stickers on their cultures andanalyzes the differences of English and Chinese bumper stickers from the cultural pointof view, and the reasons that result in these differences. As English and Chinese bumperstickers are related to different cultures, they have their unique features. The authorrandomly chooses100English and Chinese samples respectively from Google ImageCorpus. After the analysis, the author points out that the content of English bumperstickers covers various aspects such as religion, politics and self-identity, but Chinesebumper stickers are mainly about driving safety with humorous expressions. Thedeep-seated reason is that western culture promotes individualism and individuals areencouraged to show independence and uniqueness while eastern culture emphasizes oncollectivism whose core element seems to be oneness with other people.. In addition, inthe application of bumper stickers, similarities of English and Chinese bumper stickers are analyzed in the fourth section. The author proposes that both English and Chinesebumper stickers abide by and violate some of the pragmatic rules. In order to achievesome communicative purpose, English and Chinese bumper stickers violate somemaxims of cooperative principle and meanwhile follow the maxims of politenessprinciple and relevance theory.A contrastive analysis of English and Chinese bumper stickers from theperspectives of culture and pragmatics can improve the understanding of western andeastern cultures. The knowledge of differences and similarities of English and Chinesebumper stickers are of considerable value and guidance to cross-culturalcommunications.