Cultural Information In The C-E Dictionary Designed For Foreign Learners Of Chinese

The concept of culture is elusive and hard to define. Scholars form different viewpoints from their own academic angles. In the circle of FLT, people usually regard"culture"as the whole way of life of a specific community. This definition involves the daily life and custom of this specific community, and also the value system behind the customs.As to the relationship between culture and language, scholar Lin Jicheng's view points represents most scholars'view: Language is one part of culture and it reflects culture. From the language of one nation, we will have a glimpse of the rich culture of that nation. The differences in culture will be reflected in different parts of the language system.Since the relationship between culture and language is so close, the importance of culture teaching in FLT is self-evident. Language communication is not at all just a matter of language structure, but is always restricted by cultural rules. One cannot really know the culture of a country if he does not know its language; neither can he really grasp the language without some knowledge of its culture. Modern linguistics and foreign language teaching theory find that the cultural competence of a learner is just as important as his/her language competence in successful communication between cultures. Many cultural mistakes also lead to serious consideration of the importance of presenting cultural information to foreign language learners, and what kind of cultural information should be presented to them.In the academic circle of TCFL, there had been heated discussion about what kind of cultural information should be introduced to the teaching process. Scholar Zhang Zhanyi's theory of cultural knowledge information and cultural communication information had attracted most attention, and enjoys the most agreement. His theory is as follows:The cultural content in FLT should be divided into cultural knowledge information and cultural communication information. The former refers to the information that does not directly affect the understanding and using of the words or expressions in communication between two different cultures; the lack of it will not lead to misunderstanding in the communication. While the latter directly affects understanding and communication; the lack of it directly will lead to communication failure; it will lead to misunderstanding or even cause problems.Scholar Chen Guanglei further developed his theory and put forward the division of cultural communication information into structural culture, semantic culture and pragmatic culture.Structural culture is culture related to the language structure (grammar), which is embodied in structures such as words, phrases, sentences, and texts. Semantic culture is culture content and culture spirit in the semantic system of a language. Pragmatic culture is culture related to language using, the cultural rules connecting language and social situation as well as interpersonal relationship, such as forms of address, greetings, expressing thanks and responses, terms of respect and self-depreciatory expressions, farewell, praises and responses, taboos and euphemisms.This thesis has analyzed the viewpoints of different scholars from different disciplines, and summaries the main content of semantic culture and pragmatic culture as follows:Semantic culture is demonstrated in these parts: connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, words that show the special customs of China, idiomatic expressions, allusions, other information that is related to special cultural background of China. Pragmatic culture is mainly the following: forms of address, greetings and enquiry, terms of respect and self-depreciating terms, bidding farewell, expressing thanks and reply, praising and polite declining.This thesis has studied seven dictionaries, English learners'dictionaries, both monolingual and bilingual, and Chinese-English dictionaries to find out what peoplehave done in presenting cultural information in dictionaries and what are to be done.The thesis at last designed a new system of cultural information in a dictionary designed for foreign learners of Chinese. Both cultural knowledge information and cultural communicative information, as well as semantic culture and pragmatic culture are presented in this dictionary. They are presented in both the macrostructure and microstructure of this dictionary, respectively in: entry-selection and arrangement, inset pages, appendixes, definitions, illustrative examples, pictorial illustrations, etymology, cultural features and cultural notes, usage guidance, labels, language notes, pragmatic comments, etc.The thesis has organized the related theories of culture and TCFL, as well as the cultural information to be presented in teaching. It has also studies several dictionaries to support the research. However, there are still some defects due to the author's incompetence. All of the research work is done by referring to other's theories and by studying the existent dictionaries, and has not done field work. The author does not have rich experience in compiling this kind of dictionary, and does not know the actual need of foreign learners. Therefore, future work in this field is to do some fieldwork, i.e., to do questionnaire or to teach foreign students and get to know their needs. This dictionary will be further improved this way.