The Cultural Connotation Differences Of Animal Words Both In English And In Chinese

Language is a cultural carrier. Culture-loaded vocabulary plays an important role in a language. Different social backgrounds and national cultures have a great effect on the cultural connotations of vocabulary. Animals are friends of human beings. Languages of all nations contain a lot of words denoting animals, and so do Chinese and English. Along with the development and progress of human society, many animals are tamed to become domestic animals serving people, and many others have become people's pet animals. So, animals have become part of people's life.As science develops, people have learned more and more about animals. Zoological gardens are now necessary scenes in many major cities all over the world. Hundreds of thousands of books on animals have been published, including many fairy tales in which animals are personified. Every TV station has special programs about animals on certain channels. In all these processes, animal words gradually have got their established connotations in all languages. That is, people associate their feelings and emotions, even happenings and natural phenomena with various animals, which are thought to represent different characters like people, or serve as omens. Many animals have become a kind of symbolism in people's thinking, and this symbolism is reflected in the language. Sayings like "as cunning as a fox" appear in many languages. However, because of different history and culture, the connotations of animal words in one language do not necessarily coincide with those in another because of different outlook of life and conception of beauty in different cultures.In order to make objective connotation differences on animal words both in English and in Chinese, this thesis adopts a method of contrastive analysis. By means of investigation and the analysis of first-hand data obtained from the self-designed test and questionnaire, the results are expected to discuss the...