Research On Cultural Schema In Intercultural Communications

With the development of cognitive linguistics, schema theory has become the topical focus of many linguistics researches. It is a theory which examines how knowledge is represented and how these representations are in favor of other theory applications. In the category of language science, schema theory has potential for development into many areas.With the rapid development of the global economy, everyone is beginning to realize that no nation, group or culture can remain isolated. Countries will be more tightly connected and communication will be more frequent. People of differing cultural backgrounds in terms of culture, tradition, custom and religion will intermingle and form a new cultural schema background, which will further influence their choice and application of discourse during communication. In intercultural communication, it is important to use the proper communication strategies in order to get an effective communication result. Therefore, the success of communication is determined by whether both parties have similar cultural schema and make appropriate choices of communicative strategies. The research of cultural schema theory in intercultural communications aids successful communication.According to cultural schema theory, any social communication action between people can be annotated by cultural schema theory. As a result, as the basis of theory background, cultural schema theory will help people to study other people's communicative styles and respond accordingly. In the dissertation, three groups of subjects are given an interview of two different communication situations, and their answers are analysed, after which some important findings are arrived at: First, the cultural schema does influence the cultural patterns and even the behavior of overseas students in China. Second, students who have been a long time in China, or have a better understanding of China's culture, would have an easy time here because their original cultural schema has accepted China's culture and lead them to use the proper strategies during communication.The above findings have some pedagogical implications, that some pre-training in cultural schema would help them accept, settle down in and deal with life in their host country. This pre-training would provide cultural knowledge, while engendering cultural acceptance and facilitating communication.This study has significance in the theory and practice of cultural acquisition, communication competence and intercultural communications.