The Cultural Comparison Of English And Chinese Vocabulary

Culture is closely related to language, and the most closely and directly reflecting factor is vocabulary. The learners of the second language should not only attach importance to the superficial cultural factors, such as the sameness and difference of cultural connotative meaning of vocabulary, the choice of meaning of rhetoric, and other cultural factors in the communication, but also understand the deep cultural factors such as the national philosophy, physics, literature, art, history, the thinking style, views of value, customs, and aesthetic interest implied in language or attached to language forms. A subsystem should be constructed with selected cultural contents according to the logical unity and coherence in the second language teaching. Therefore, an organic entirety-an entire and scientific second language teaching system can be constructed through radical disposition of this subsystem and function, grammar vocabulary and other subsystems of second language teaching, to bring closer the social and psychological distance between the learners and the culture of the target language, and guide good learning motives in learners for the target language. This essay takes culture as its main theme, gives definition of culture and language, discussion on reciprocal influence and reflection of language and culture, and comparison of English and Chinese appellation terms, English and Chinese special terms, English and Chinese figurative meanings, the relationship between English and Chinese synonym meanings and the cultural difference between English and Chinese vocabulary and second language teaching. Cultural explanation of connotative meaning of vocabulary is also given. The analysis of examples is combined with cultural explanation, with the analysis of examples before cultural explanation to reflect the manifestation of the thinking style, views of value, social customs, religious beliefs, and psychological state in vocabulary through precipitating the cultural factors in vocabulary and to provide materials for the teachers on second language teaching to construct a subsystem with selected cultural contents in lexical teaching.