A Cross-Cultural Study On Interpersonal Relationship And Appellation System

The dispute about the relationship between language and culture has been the focus of the linguistic studies. Due to the complexity of the relationship between language and culture, complete cultural determinism or linguistic determinism is not right. Although the concrete quality of the relationship between language and culture has not been decided yet, it has been completely accepted that culture and language have deep influences on each other.Interpersonal relationship, an important part of culture, shows different characteristics in different cultures. Of the numerous influencing factors of interpersonal relationship, culture is the most important. Confucianism is the cultural orientation of China and even the whole East while in the West, the cultural orientation is the western religion and philosophy. With the influences of different cultural orientations, the Chinese interpersonal relationship is characteristic of group orientation, kinship and feeling emphasized, while the English is individualism orientation, freedom and equality emphasized. Appellation system is very important in language. With the influences of different cultural backgrounds, the appellation systems are endowed with different characteristics. In this thesis, the influence of interpersonal relationship on appellation system is studied.On the basis of the previous studies, the interpersonal relationships of the Chinese and the English are studied and compared in a more systematic and reasonable way. Furthermore, the interpersonal relationship and the appellation system are related and the influences of the former on the latter are studied. In the part of conclusion, the present author points out that with the influences of interpersonal relationship of different cultural characteristics, the Chinese andthe English appellation systems present correspondingly different characteristics. Thus, one aspect of the relationship between language and culture is proved, i.e. culture has deep influences on language.