Conversational Styles Of Chinese And Americans: A Comparative Study Of Two Sitcoms: Wu Lin Wai Zhuan And Friends

Language is an essential instrument of social communication without which we can hardly conduct our life. In a like manner, culture constitutes a vitally important part of our life and shapes our working career. Many researchers have investigated how language and culture operate cross cultures, and how they interact upon each other. However, few of them have discussed the impact of cultural settings upon conversational styles.Tannen has made great achievements in the study of the conversational style, and George Yule has also made some vital findings in his conversational analysis. This thesis approaches Chinese and American conversational styles from an intercultural perspective. It employs Tannen's and Yule's theory to address conversational styles in Chinese and American contexts, and conducts comparative studies. At the same time, it incorporates cultural orientation theory (individualism and collectivism) to reveal how cultural background shapes conversation styles. In order to ensure data reliability and validity of the research, the author opts to focus on two situation comedies, Friends and Wu Lin Wai Zhuan (My Own Swordsman). The conversations in Friends and My Own Swordsman are very vivid reflections of the daily conversations in different cultures, which provide researchers a good sample for comparative analysis.The present study aims to address the following three issues:(1) How differences of cultural values affect Chinese and Americans in choosing conversational topics.(2) A comparison of Chinese and American conversational styles in reference to cultural value orientations.(3)The theoretical implication of the major findings. It argued that:1. Chinese and Americans tend to choose different conversational topics; while collectivism-oriented Chinese tend to choose more abstract topics, individualism-oriented Americans tend to adopt more specific ones, and some of which are very bold and provocative in Chinese culture.2. Chinese and Americans tend to adopt different conversational strategies:a) Although both Chinese and American tend to make use of interruption, Americans make more use of this style than Chinese do;b) Americans tend to employ the device of enthusiasm constraint, while Chinese tend to express their feelings indirectly, and seldom apply this style to conversations;c) Both Chinese and Americans tend to adopt the devices of mutual revelation and narrative strategies;d) Americans tend to make more use of irony and joking, and their conversational style is more flexible and humorous; Chinese base their identity on the social network and maintain harmony and seldom use these devices.3. Americans tend to be direct, explicit, assertive, confrontational, informal, exaggerative and humorous; Chinese tend to be indirect, implicit, personal, non-assertive, non-confrontational, formal, and less humorous.This comparative study helps intercultural communicators avoid pragmatic failures, and improve their intercultural competence. In addition, it reinforces our intercultural awareness and produces smoother intercultural communication.