A Contrastive Cross-cultural Study Of Sino-American Youths' Values

The present research status and development of cross-cultural studies on values at home and abroad can be concluded as follows: first, some existing studies adopt the macro-theoretical research method to study the cross-cultural traditional values, which primarily covers the differences between the Chinese main-stream culture and western ones. Those traditional theoretical researches include --"man is born good"or"man is born evil", collectivism-based or individualism-orientation, how to be or how to do, and so on; second, some existing studies are concerned with the cross-cultural traditional values on the micro theoretical level, which involves in just one certain aspect of differences between Chinese and western cultural main-streams, such as orientations of how to be or how to do, differences in terms of humanity between Chinese and western cultures, and so on; third, some existing studies also deal with the cross-cultural traditional values empirically, and these studies directly adopt the questionnaire survey method, compare and contrast to analyze the features of cross-cultural communication, thus acquiring the enlightenment and consequently offering the suggestions and solutions.At present, there are two problems existing in the cross-cultural values researching field—one is that most of the current research papers mainly adopt the macro and micro methods of the theoretical research, ignoring the empirical research approach, and the other is that the existing research papers focus primarily on people's traditional values, neglecting the study of the variations in the present world. The purpose of this paper is listed as follows: first, it observes and studies the variations of the differences in Sino-American traditional values in the present international context, in this way the effective approaches of Sino-American cross-cultural communication should be probed; second, resorting to the empirical research approach to study the differences in Sino-American cross-cultural values, its research result will be of some significance for the cross-cultural activities.Main contents of the paper are: This research centers on two films as researching samples: one is from Chinese—Still Life, the other from the USA—Saving Private Ryan. Still Life, a Golden-Lion-Award film at Venice Film Festival, is directed by the household Chinese film director Jia Zhangke, which concentrates on reflecting the migration movement for the Three Gorges Project. Saving Private Ryan, a Hollywood blockbuster and a masterpiece from American director Steven Spielberg, mirrors American traditional values. In short, the above-mentioned two films could well serve the representatives of both cultures. This research is based on the two sample films, from which the questionnaire survey will be designed, and then the Sino-American Youths'values will be closely studied. The main structure of the thesis is listed as below:The first chapter is literature review. It mainly deals with the definitions of cross-cultural communication and the related researches, the definitions of values and the related researches, and the definitions of cross-cultural values and the related researches.The second chapter centers on the designing idea and the researching methods. It also lists in the form of table the statistics collected from the questionnaires respectively for the two sample films. These statistics are to be used in the analysis of the following chapters.Chapters Three and Four are the main contents of the comparing and contrastive analysis of the statistics. This research is based on the following two films: Still Life and Saving Private Ryan. It directly compares, constrasts, and analyzes the similarities and differences between Sino-American subjects in the following ten different aspects of values– realism, destiny, sympathy, love, self-sacrifice, humanitarism, personal-heroism, responsibility, righteousness, and thanksgiving.Chapter Five goes further on to analyze the similarities and differences and their causes on the basis of Chapters Three and Four. The first part lists the similarities and their developing trends of Sino-American youths'values on sympathy, thanksgiving, and realism. The second part lists the differences in humanitarianism, righteousness, and responsibility of Sino-American youths. And it also deals with some conflicts of Sino-American youths. The third part deals with the cultural and social causes of the above-mentioned similarities and differences.Chapter Six copes with the significance of Sino-American youths'cross-cultural communication in this research, and it indicates the effective strategies for the Sino-American youths'cross-cultural communication.Finally, the thesis gets the conclusion as follows: There are some obvious similarities between Chinese and American youths'values, which include the following five aspects of values: humanitarianism, sympathy, thanksgiving, realism, and righteousness. Besides, the Chinese youths and the American youths have some differences in the following five aspects of values: self-sacrifice, personal-heroism, responsibility, destiny, and love.