Differences Of Cultural Connotations Between English And Chinese Animal Words

Language and culture are closely related to each other. Language is a part of culture as well as a mirror of it. Every language is, to a certain degree, peculiar to a language community. Language is mainly influenced by culture in the word. Word, as the core of language, is the most active and sensitive component of a language and it has the closest relationship with culture. Animal word is an important part of almost all the human languages, and many of them reflect particular connotations in English and Chinese. With the development of the society, animal words which have cultural differences play important roles in the communication between China and Western world and the implication of difference can not be neglected in the language learning.Animals have the close relationship with human beings. Animals serve people and become friends or pets of human beings. People associate animals with natural phenomena, personalities and emotions. They play very important role in the life of human beings, so do animal words in language. Many animals have become a kind of symbolism in people's thinking, which is reflected in languages. However, due to the influence of different factors, such as history and region, animal words with rich and various cultural connotations often result in misunderstanding in communication. So far, there has not been a work published dealing comprehensively and systematically with the differences of cultural connotations between English and Chinese animal words. And studies from perspective of language learning are insufficient either in breadth or in depth. In this thesis, the author attempts to make a comparative analysis to the cultural connotations of animal words between English and Chinese. In order to evaluate effectiveness of contrastive analysis, an experiment was made by the author. One way ANOVA of the data collected in the experiment indicates that there are great differences between experimental group and control group: identical animal words with different or partially similar cultural connotations; different animal words with similar cultural connotations; animal words with unique cultural connotations in one language. While, there is a small difference in the part of identical animal words with similar cultural connotations between two groups. Contrastive analysis is an effective way for learning cultural connotations of animal words. Learning cultural connotations can greatly arouse learner's interest in foreign language learning and cultivate their ability of using language.Based on the comparative study of cultural connotations and analysis, the thesis discusses the problem of applying the finding to translation.