On Deep-structure Cultural Transfer

Communication gets more and more popular with globalization. Some barriers appear due to the respective characters of different cultures. In intercultural communication and foreign language learning and use, people often unconsciously use their own cultural norms and values to conduct their own behaviors and thoughts, and at the same time, use them as a criterion to judge other people's behaviors and thoughts. We call this phenomenon as cultural transfer. Under such conditions, even if one has skillfully mastered the grammatical knowledge of a foreign language, and can speak the language fluently, he sometimes cannot correctly and properly figure out what people from different cultures speak really means, which may often result in communicating difficulties, misunderstandings, and even hatred.According to the theory of culture structure, culture can be classified into surface-structure culture and deep-structure culture. There are two types of cultural transfer: surface-structure cultural transfer and deep-structure cultural transfer. The former refers to the transfer of cultural meanings of words and the transfer occurs in observable daily speech acts, and the latter refers to the transfer of worldviews and cultural values in deep psychological gradation. Surface-structure cultural transfer can be overcome by learning and comparing because of its explicitness, many scholars have primarily studied it. While the deep-structure transfer is implicit and not easily perceived, thus they will be easy to be overlooked. And the research of this aspect is comparatively less, but the deep-structure cultural transfer is an important issue which may bring more serious communicative failures. Since the underlying values, worldviews as well as beliefs are rooted in one's mind and usually act as the agency to guide one's mind and direct his behavior, the study of deep-structure is important and significant.The thesis is divided into six parts in addition to an introduction and a conclusion. Introduction discusses the cultural transfer problems that happen in intercultural communication and points out the importance of deep-structure cultural transfer studies influenced by the tendency of globalization. The first chapter is literature review about the relevant studies concerning culture and transfer. The second chapter first defines some basic concepts of culture, then explore the classifications of cultural transfer and its effect, especially the deep-structure cultural transfer on intercultural communication. Chapter Three is the core part of the thesis. Based on contrastive analysis, the chapter first conducts the contrastive study on deep-structure cultural factors, then analyze four case studies, which devotes to the exploration of the roots of deep-structure cultural transfer. Some findings and implications will be obtained and discussed in chapter three. Chapter Four will mainly examine the methods and measures of dealing with deep-structure cultural transfer. The conclusion is the summary of the whole thesis plus personal views.This thesis aims at studying deep-structure cultural transfer from the perspective of intercultural communication, which could lead communicators to a general understanding of the complexities of intercultural communication and providing them with a cultural perspective in dealing with the common problems in intercultural communication. I hope with the help of this thesis the communicators will: come to see how culture, especially deep-structure culture influences our interaction with people of different cultural backgrounds; learn to predict and solve possible problems in intercultural communication; overcome cultural barriers in foreign language learning and teaching.