A Study On The Relationship Between The English And Chinese Automobile Lexicons And The American And China’s Automobile Cultures

The relation of language, thought, and culture is a topic which has been drawing so many researchers’ attention for so long time. Traditionally, three views have been held by different scholars in different times. Held by the philosophers and thinkers in the time of the classical civilizations, the first view is that thought and culture influence or even determine language. Presented by Herder and von Humboldt, enhanced by Sapir and Whorf, and accepted by many researchers, including cognitive linguists and some current scholars, the second view is that language influences or even determines thought and culture. Held by the universalist researchers, the third view is that language is independent of thought and culture so that language does not influence thought and culture. Intended to explore the real relation, a study is taken up in this thesis on the relationship between the English and Chinese automobile lexicons and the American and China’s automobile cultures. Based on the careful analyses of the data collected from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (eleventh edition) and Modern Chinese Dictionary (sixth edition), the differences between the English and Chinese automobile lexicons have been discovered, which lies in eight aspects:the total number, the loanwords, the peculiar words, the proper nouns, the comprehensiveness, the systematicity, the registers, and the idioms. These eight aspects of differences reveal that the Chinese automobile lexicon is far lagged behind by the English automobile lexicon. In order to find out the reasons causing the above differences, a thorough investigation is conducted into the differences of the automobile histories and cultures in the United States and China. It is discovered that there is a correlation of the differences between English and Chinese automobile lexicons with the differences between the American and China’s automobile cultures. That is to say, it is the backward status of China’s automobile culture that determines the backward status of the Chinese automobile lexicon and it is the fully-developed status of the American automobile culture that determines the fully-developed status of the English automobile lexicon. In one word, the automobile culture determines the automobile language. Grounded in this correlation, a conclusion is safely reached that as regard to the real relation of language, thought, and culture, thought and culture influence or even determine language.