A Cross-cultural Study Of Animal Words In Chinese And English

In the long course of the development of human history, animals usually keep a close relation with human beings and influence human existence and development deeply. The close relation results in human complex feelings of fondness, sympathy antipathy, or fear. Also, people often use animals to express their feelings. There are so many vocabularies with relation to animals in both English and Chinese cultures, and those English and Chinese animal words make up a great part of their own respective system of language.However, we cannot make the ignorance that language has been keeping the closest relationship with culture. Words, which have been playing a role of cornerstone in language, are extensively related with culture. Words reflect the special social culture, and different social backgrounds and cultural differences lead to the connotative differences of words in English and Chinese. For example, different cultural backgrounds and ways of thinking result in the different connotations of animal words. Even though there are two identical animal words, they can share quite different connotations in the two cultures. On the contrary, two different animal words can also share similar cultural connotations. Therefore, it is very necessary and indispensable for English learners to have such a profound study on animal words influenced by culture.The thesis makes a comparative analysis, focusing on four aspects of similarities and differences of animal words and cultural connotations in both Chinese and English: identical animal words sharing similar cultural connotations; identical animal words sharing different connotations in the two cultures; different animal words sharing similar cultural connotations; blankness of animal words in English and in Chinese. From the comparison, we can clearly find the historical and cultural differences of animal words in the two cultures.Then, we must have such a perplexity that how those differentiations occur. In fact, those differences originate not only in history and convention but also in values and religion, and so on. The listed factors contribute to the different characteristics of the two languages that reflect the two nation's respective splendid civilization.Culture is a complex social phenomenon, which influences people's life greatly. People's words and deeds are defined by their own culture. It fumed 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.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 puts forward some suggestions about how to improve college students' communicative competence in college English study.