Patterns Of Thinking And Cross-Cultural Communication-A Comparison Between Chinese And Americans

The world today is characterized by a fast growing number of contacts resulting in communication among people with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This cross-cultural communication covers many fields from education, business, medical care, politics, tourism, culture, diplomacy, media and entertainment. Although media and internet have made it easy for people from different countries and cultures to communicate with each other, globalization provides people more opportunities to communicate than ever before. It is just such kind of globalization that calls for the necessity of intercultural communication. The more frequently people communicate with each other, the more important for them to be fully aware of the cultures of the people with whom they communicate.Intercultural communication concerns the differences between cultures, and these differences can lead to embarrassment in communication. At the worst, such mistakes may confuse or even offend the people we wish to communicate with. Among the differences impeding communication concerned, there exist three kinds of variables (Samovar and Porter,1982) (1) belief, value system, attitude, world outlook and social organization. (2) language and pattern of thinking. (3) non-verbal behaviors, time conceptualization and uses of space. As Samovar and Porter (1994) claims that among the above variables, pattern of thinking is the most important and representative one. Chinese and Americans have sharply different patterns of thinking for various reasons. This thesis compares the differences and discusses their impacts on intercultural communication, which is expected to shed some new light on the issue of intercultural communication.The whole thesis consisted of seven chapters .Chapter 1 tells the necessity, purpose, significance, and scope of the present study. Chapter 2 reviews some basic terms which are mentioned in the thesis. Chapter 3 focuses on a detailed comparison of pattern of thinking between Chinese and Americans. Chapter 4 analyzes the causes of the above-mentioned differences between Chinese and Americans. .Chapter 5 explains how patterns of thinking influence intercultural communication. Chapter 6 provides some constructive methods to overcome the bad effects that the differences bring to intercultural communication. Chapter 7 summarizes the whole thesis and points out its significance and limitations.