An Inter-cultural Comparison Between Sino-American Cultural Values

In the world today, there are a fast increasing number of contacts which result 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. As the world today is getting more and more globalized, people have got more and more opportunities to communicate than ever before, although media and internet have already made it easy for people from different countries and cultures to communicate with each other. 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.As China is getting stronger and stronger in economy and many other aspects, especially after it entered WTO, our nation became more open up to the outside world. What the conditions now require is more and more attention to the western culture. We need to learn not only westerners' language, but also their cultural values, which are rather important and necessary for successful inter-cultural communication. On the other hand, there is a great need to make a systematic study of our own culture, a need to introduce Chinese culture to westerners. That is, as we focus on the cultural values of the west, we should also know our own cultural values by comparison, which is a very effective and efficient way of achieving successful inter-cultural communication.The effective and efficient way of comparison just mentioned is used in this thesis in studying an inter-cultural comparison between Sino-American cultural values. As we all know the Chinese culture very well, and for every one of us, Chinese cultural values are like air, which sometimes we can't explain very clearly to outsiders, but it is the way we behave in, also because of the limited time and space here, this thesis mainly focuses on the American cultural values, which we should pay more attention to and lay more importance on for successful inter-cultural communication with Americans.This thesis consists of six chapters. In the first chapter, the purpose and needs for the study are introduced and a general outline of subsequent chapters is given. Chapter two is a literature review. In this chapter, at first some definitions of key terms included in or related to this thesis are presented. Next, the writer reviews the historical development and status quo of related studies in America and China. In the third chapter, the origins of Sino-American cultural values are discussed. For the origin of Chinese cultural values, the writer mainly talks about two key concepts of Confucianism—Ren and Li, which affect the development and formation of Chinese cultural values too much. Later in this chapter, the writer also talks about the dialectical pattern of thought and the way of thinking in the mode of Confucian classics' study. For the origin of American cultural values, the writer focuses on America as a nation of immigrants and the cultural pluralism in the United States.The keystone of the thesis is in chapter four and five. Both of the two chapters present Chinese cultural values first, and then present American cultural values, in the way of comparison. Chapter four is about differences of interpersonal relationship between Chinese and American cultural values. Five aspects are mentioned for Chinese interpersonal relationship—harmonious relationship, power/authority, the norm of behaving according to one's status (the norm of status identity), the maintenance of warm human feelings between self and others, man and nature. As for American interpersonal relationship, seven aspects are included—individualism and equality, cooperation and "fair play", man and nature, obligation, confrontation, informality, formality and friendship, and competition and desire for success. In chapter five, the writer mainly tells us Sino-American material and spiritual prosperity. Nowadays, Chinese people are used to the thinking "earn more, spend more". As for activity orientation, China belongs to being-in-becoming orientation. On the side of America, six aspects are referred to. They are work and play, time and money, motivation and measurable achievement, material well-being and humanitarianism, effort and optimism, and at last, for orientation to action, America is doing oriented.The last chapter is the conclusion part which summarizes this paper. With the development of economy, science and technology, especially with China's accession to the World Trade Organization, the nation has speeded up the process of opening up to the outside world and has got more opportunities to communicate with people from the western world, especially America. For successful inter-cultural communication, learning English as a language itself is not enough any more. What requires more attention and becomes more important and necessary today is the study of American cultural values. This part also presents some limitations of the whole thesis.