| Human beings have a long history of intercultural communication. As early as Tang Dynasty, Chinese Buddhist monk Jian Zhen traveled to Japan and contributed greatly to the spread of Chinese culture. Chinese renowned Silk Road was in itself a cultural road. Marco Polo traveled from Italy to China, building up the intercultural communication bridge between Italy and China. At present, with the progress of communication and transportation technology, as well as the globalization of economy, intercultural communication turns out to be an inevitable part of human life. Marshall McLuhan predicted in Understanding Media in 1964 that "the globe is no more than a village." It is natural that the communication in the whole world will be as frequent and convenient as if among the people in a village. Since the open-door policy, the Chinese people from all lines of work have more opportunities to communicate with those from other cultures. Intercultural communications, either between countries, civil organizations or among individuals, are becoming more frequent day after day. After China's accession into WTO, intercultural communicative competence has urgently needed while a talent with intercultural communicative competence is exactly what modern society calls for.Many students lack intercultural communicative competence, partly due to language, but mostly because of culture. Many top students can speak fluently, but cannot fulfill communicative tasks because of lacking in cultural knowledge. That is why the thesis aims at introducing some cultural differences and explaining how those differences affect intercultural communication. This thesis directs its research to the variety in Chinese and American dominant cultures. Its major view is that culture shapes social relationship and further influences intercultural communication. In Part One and Part Two it discusses how social relationships form, tracing the formation of social relationships to the cultural source and explaining how social relationships have rooted in the cultural members' mind. Part Three and Part Four explore how social relationships affect intercultural communication. The thesis adopts the linear style in expounding: Part One mainly explores what intercultural communication is; Part Two explains the cultural root of the formation of social relationships; Part Three focuses on Chinese social relationships and American social relationships; Part Four integrates culture, social relationships and intercultural communication, expounding the usage of address forms to prove that social relationships decided by social culture will certainly function on intercultural communication.The word "communication" is derived from Latin word "communcare", which means the sharing of experience, thoughts, feeling and knowledge. Human communication differs from the communication of other creatures in that humanity can generate and use the symbols to communicate. Symbols are major means of communication. Whatever symbols, so long as they can convey some meanings, can be used for communication, such as language, diagram, gesture and expressions. According to symbols used, communications can be divided into two major groups: verbal communication and non-verbal communication. This thesis mainly centers on verbal communication. To be exact, the thesis is discussing the one between two individuals from distinctive cultures. Intercultural communication can occur between countries and individuals, but no matter between countries or civil organizations, the communicators involved in communication must be individual persons. In this sense, any communication is one happening between two persons and the difference is that they represent differently. Intercultural communication shares something in common with and something different from intracultural communication and subcultural communication. Scholars have found that the variables involved in intercultural communication and in the one within a culture are almost the same. (Jia Yuxin, 1997, p9) Both inter...
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