Sociocultural Meanings Of Words In English, Chinese And Mongolian

This thesis is a research into the sociocultural meanings of words in three languages, namely English, Chinese and Mongolian. A comparative study is employed and lexical items from the three languages are juxtaposed to show similarities and differences in sociocultural meaning. On one hand, the similarities are seen as the universal aspect of language in general, and on the other hand, the differences are considered the culture-specific aspect of language. This insight into the two sides of language will be the theoretical accomplishment of the research. What's more, the specific differences in sociolinguistic meaning of words between different languages will give us a better understanding of English, Chinese and Mongolian lexicons. This knowledge will enable teachers to help their Chinese-speaking and Mongolian-speaking students overcome cultural barriers so as to get a solid command of English vocabulary. And the practical purpose of helping students avoid misunderstanding in future intercultural communications lies at the very heart of the current research project.The overall structure of the thesis is like this. The introductory part explicates the relations between lexicon and its sociocultural context, and thereby highlights the importance of the sociocultural context to the understanding of lexical items of a language, which is followed by a statement of the research purpose. The second part of the thesis conducts a brief survey of literature and then gives a concise account of the four disciplinary areas this current thesis draws on, that is, general linguistics, sociolinguistics, language and culture, and lexicology. Next comes the core part of the thesis, which compares a number of words in the three aforesaid languages and then traces the sociocultural causes of the similarities and differences both in ideology and in linguistic arrangement. The words examined fall into five categories including kinship names, names of home appliances, animal names,politeness expressions and scientific terms. The analyses lead to a natural conclusion, which winds up the whole thesis by drawing readers'attention to the issue of vocabulary teaching to English learners.