Cross-Lingual Studies On The Additional Meaning Of Vocabulary

The present dissertation studies the similarities and differences of the cultural additional meanings of vocabulary in different languages, as well as their application in Teaching Chinese as foreign language.Culture is consisted of all the material and spiritual wealth created in human evolution, and language is a very important means for human communication and cognition. They both depend on specific society. In this sense, various societies and communities create various cultures. Language and culture depend on each other. As a reflection upon culture, language will also display carious cultural differences. In essence, language is a kind culture. As a conspicuous ethnic symbol, language contains different inner constructions and verbal usages for various cultural backgrounds, reflects different cultural connotations at every linguistic level such as sound, vocabulary and grammar and therefore becomes the important system of culture cognition and research.Vocabulary is the most active component in language, and it also illustrates the changes of times and culture development. It is believed that vocabulary studies can greatly facilitate studying social changes and the living mode, ideology, values and the like originated from the society.What the dissertation studies includes phonemes, words and set phrases which contains proper names and other vocabulary such as idioms, proverbs, allegorical saying (Xiehouyu) and argots and so on. Compared with daily vocabulary, set phrases are featured for its stable structure, integrated meaning and syntactic function. These phrases are taken into vocabulary for they are indeoendent linguistic symbols to produce sentences though they look like small clause.The vocabulary meaning is classified into connotation meaning and additional meaning. Connotation meaning is an objective meaning based on objective world and changes with the development of the world. Additional meaning is a kind of subjective meaning based on connotation meaning and changes with the changes of people, nationality, time and place.The dissertation aims at discussing the social cultural background and ideology for using the language through contrasting various vocabularies in different languages and the relationship between language and the outside world. As a means for communication, language must be taken into consideration along with its cultural background. It is also hoped that the research achievement can be applied into cross-cultural communication and teaching Chinese as foreign language. Vocabulary learning plays a very important part in cross-cultural communication and Chinese learning as foreign language. It also facilitates the language communication ability which is the ability to solve communication problems through language in different contexts, cultures and conditions. It is the language communication ability that is the standard to judge the proficiency of second language.Therefore, the dissertation makes comparisons and contrasts in the following four aspects. Firstly, there will be a comparison between the sources of the additional meanings of vocabulary such as material environment, social life and folk customs. The additional meaning of vocabulary is based on the subjective cognition of specific societies and reflects vivid ethnic culture. Secondly, there will be a discussion on the four modes in the additional meanings of vocabulary in different languages such as nonexistence, accordance, malposition and difference, body vocabulary taken as the case, in order to dig out the similarities and differences between various national cultures. Thirdly, there will also be a comparison of the rhetoric devices between the additional meanings of vocabulary in different languages such as simile, metaphor, pun, onomatopoeia and mimosis in Japanese and Japanese culture, aiming at discovering the interactive relationship between rhetoric and culture. The relationship between context and vocabulary will also be discussed. The last part is on the reasons why there are so many hurdles in cross-cultural communication and teaching Chinese as foreign language and on the benefits to facilitate cross-cultural communication by correct understanding of additional meaning. The traditional listening, reading, writing and speaking skills can only help students improve their basic knowledge on language, which misses the temporary requirements for the communicative skills via language. Therefore, cultural semantics can greatly promote students’ sensitivity towards language and culture and prevents possible errors in cross-cultural communication.