An Analysis Of Cultural Vacancy From Cross-cultural Communication Perspective

Language is the carrier of a given culture, and also an indispensable component of a given culture. Language can reflect and transmit cultural information, and different languages mirror different cultural traits.Chinese and western cultures differ from each other in many aspects due to different living conditions, historical backgrounds, social customs, thought patterns, etc. With the fast development of international contacts, cross-cultural communication happens much more frequently than ever before. Cultural vacancy, the uniqueness of a given culture, has been perceived gradually, and has become an insurmountable obstacle for cross-cultural communication.Cultural vacancy has been a very important project in the present studies related to comparison of cultures. It can be defined as some unique cultural and language phenomena which exist in one culture, but whose equivalence cannot be found in the language of another culture because of different living conditions, religious beliefs, social customs, thought patterns, etc.So far, many foreign and Chinese scholars have applied the theories about cultural vacancy to comparison of languages to describe language differences at phonological, lexical, grammatical, semantic, rhetoric and other levels. These studies are of great value, both in theory and in practice, for the studies of cross-cultural communication, foreign language teaching and translation. However, the previous studies are limited in many aspects. They mainly cover language comparison, various classifications of cultural vacancy, etc. Few of them explore the reasons resulting in cultural vacancy, the scientific classification of cultural vacancy, strategies for dealing with cultural vacancy, etc.This thesis, which is mainly from cross-cultural communication perspective, takes the approach of contrastive analysis to do research in various cultural vacancies in Chinese and western cultures, commits to analyze various factors leading to cultural vacancy, discusses various communication obstacles resulting from cultural vacancy. The main purpose of this thesis is to find effective strategies to deal with cultural vacancy so as to promote cross-cultural communication, foreign language teaching, and translation.This thesis is divided into five chapters:the first chapter introduces research background, method, the significance and objectives of this research and theoretical foundations; in Chapter Two, some previous studies are reviewed and some important terms and theories related to this research are discussed; Chapter Three describes the characteristics and classifications of cultural vacancy, mainly analyzes various factors which result in cultural vacancy; the fourth chapter talks about the influences of cultural vacancy on cross-cultural communication, and explores strategies of dealing with cultural vacancy; the last chapter, based on findings of this research, points out limitations of this thesis and provides valuable proposals for the future studies in this field.