Cultural Vacancy Of Chinese And American Films In Cross-Cultural Communication

Cultural vacancy, as a cultural phenomenon, is the fundamental type of vacancy. Most linguists place great emphasis on the study of lexical gap, but ignored the existence of cultural vacancy. In recent years, with the intensification of cross-cultural communication, cultural differences among various nations are more and more obvious, which has caused obstacles in cultural exchanges. Scholars who have carried out cultural researches and begun to probe into the relationship between language and culture, they found that language is both a social phenomenon and a cultural phenomenon, and started to gain an understanding of the concept of cultural vacancy. The research, however, only focuses on the study of language. In review of this point, the thesis analyzes the cultural vacancy in terms of films. This is a tentative study of cultural vacancy in the field, which will play a positive role in prompting the development of films.This thesis makes a contrastive study of Chinese and American films, because Chinese culture and American culture are the typical representatives of the eastern and western culture. First of all, the author of the thesis studies differences and similarities of the two different cultures. Considering that the films play an important role in cross-cultural communication as cultural products, this thesis demonstrates the relationship between culture and film and gives an explanation for the film culture, and further discusses Chinese film culture and American film culture which have formed their own film cultural characteristics. According to these characteristics, cultural vacancy in type, style, form, content and aesthetic are the important research contents, and therefore the thesis utilizes a large number of films to make a thorough study of Chinese and American films from the five aspects mentioned, each of them reflecting cultural vacancy. In order to prove the existences of cultural vacancy, the causes of cultural vacancy are the key part of the research in this filed. Furthermore, the author thinks that it is necessary to know about the current situation of Chinese and American films so as to lay a foundation for the further research in the future.With the proposition of vacancy theory, we have a new direction for studying culture. There are two purposes in this thesis: the first is to make filmmakers realize the importance of national culture, for they have responsibility for keeping the unique culture and passing traditional culture down to future generations; the second is to improve the audience connoisseurship so that they can understand the content of films better. Taking these purposes into consideration, the thesis tentatively puts forward several suggestions to remedy cultural vacancy to promote cultural exchanges between Chinese and American films.