Alysis Fo Cultural Connotation Behind Animal Words Between English And Chinese Proverbs

Language is a social phenomenon, and carries all kinds of social-cultural factors. The sociality of language reveals that it is impossible for language to exist and develop in social vacuum. In other words, language inevitably takes inseparate relationship with culture. Therefore, proverbs, as a form reflecting language, are greatly connected with culture. Proverbs are the fruit of wisdom of human beings, and the reflection of people's life. They deliver all sorts of physiological information and cultural knowledge. In addition, vocabulary is the most sensitive, active and basic component of language. Therefore, the influence of culture on language is also embedded in vocabulary. Animal words or animal culturally-loaded words are a category of words rich in cultural connotation.Since the ancient time, human beings live with animals and often deliver ideas and feelings through animals. Now that people of different cultural background live in the same world, the feelings and associations of human on animal words inevitably have a lot in common; due to different cultural background and cultural factors, the understanding of people in different backgrounds on animal words is different in one way or another. In the meanwhile, these commonness and differences can also be found from proverbs. In consequence, this thesis will make a contrastive analysis of the cultural connotation behind animal words between English and Chinese proverbs, and put forward some feasible suggestion on the learning of cultural knowledge.This thesis is divided into six parts.Chapter one is the introduction part in this thesis, which introduces the research background, the research significance, and research methods, as well as the organization structure of the thesis.Chapter two is the part for some concepts and literature review. This part focuses on the relationship between language and culture, and the relationship between vocabulary and culture, as well as some related studies on these two aspects at home and abroad. It plays an important role in setting the research object and the research direction. Chapter three constructs the theoretical basis for the research, through the introduction of Leech's classification of word meaning, definitions and classifications of culturally-loaded words.Chapter four is the part for the research design, with the introduction of data collection and research methodology.Chapter five is the main part, in which contrastive analysis of cultural connotation behind animal words in English and Chinese proverbs is made.Chapter six is the part of conclusion, which summarizes the dissertation and gives its limitations and the hope for the further researches. In this chapter, several suggestions on the learning of cultural knowledge are put forward according to the similarities and differences shown in the former chapter.