Cross-Linguistic Comparison Of Animal Expressions In Respect To Cultural Connotation

Language is the carrier of culture. It is no exaggeration to say that language is the life-blood of culture and that culture is the track along which language forms and develops. In a word, language is a part of culture and plays a very important role in it. As the basic element of language, vocabulary is the backbone of the whole language system. It certainly reflects the differences of culture most obviously and extensively. There is no doubt to say that for people with different countries, their thought pattern, value, custom, religious belief, etc can be clearly reflected upon their own vocabulary. A lot of words have their lexical meaning and cultural meaning, so people cannot completely master a word without knowing it's cultural meaning.From ancient times, animals have keeping closest relationship with human beings, because human beings' existence and development rely on animals. Animals are human being's friends. 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 were tamed to become domestic animals, and many others have become people's pets. Therefore, animals have become part of people's life and got more and more familiar to people. Thus 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. However, the connotations of animal expressions in one language do not necessarily coincide with those in another because of different perceptions of the objective world, different phonetic system and semantic system, and different customs in different cultures.Culture is a complex social phenomenon, which influences people's life greatly. People's words and deeds are defined by their own culture. It turned out that the diversity of culture adds to the difficulty of communication between two nations. Unless the speaker and hearer share an understanding of each other's cultural background, they cannot communicate fully, even if they are linguistically competent. Nowadays, with the development of science and technology, the world is becoming a little "global village". All kinds of cultures influence, conflict, and intermingle mutually. Some researchers compare culture to an iceberg on the sea with most part hiding under the water, which cannot be seen. The hidden part, including value, religion, custom, thought pattern, etc, is the main causal factor of intercultural misunderstanding.In this thesis, the author will use an approach of brief comparison between English and Chinese languages. The author will look into cultural similarities and differences relating to English and Chinese animal expressions to accomplish a purpose of understanding fully the whole messages that a word carries and communicating correctly in intercultural communication. Eventually, the author put forward some suggestions about how to improve college students' communicative competence in college English teaching.