A Study On The Differences Of Family Value Between China And Western Countries From The Perspective Of Cultural Dimensions ——A Case Study On Family Trilogy

Globalization has long been the tendency of the world since last century. As the carrying forward of globalization, intercultural communication becomes more and more usual and frequent. But more often than not, misunderstandings will happen when the two communicating parties come from different cultural backgrounds. If misunderstandings are not dealt with properly, collisions, even wars will appear. Therefore mutual understanding of each other’s culture and custom is rather necessary and essential before intercultural communication. To better understand the culture of the others, it is useful to recognize and realize cultural diversities from their daily life. Family, as the basic unit of social organization, highlights the significance of family value, which is of great importance in the shaping of a person’s cultural identity.Geert Hofstede is a famous scholar both of management and of intercultural communication. He was among one of the few human resource managers who emphasized on the importance of cultural diversities in management. But in the field of intercultural communication, Hofstede is famous and of great significance for his cultural dimension theory.Geert Hofstede put forward cultural dimension theory in the 1950s. His cultural dimension theory consists of five cultural dimensions including individualism/collectivism dimension, uncertainty avoidance dimension, masculinity/femininity dimension, power distance dimension and long-term orientation/short-term orientation dimension. Hofstede and his five cultural dimensions not only contributed a lot to management, but also made great contributions to intercultural communication for they offered a better way to describe and illustrate cultural diversities which are the sources of collisions during cross-cultural communication. His research was innovative which carved a path for later scholars both of management and of cultural diversities.The writing purpose of this thesis is to describe and illustrate the cultural diversities of family value between Chinese and westerners from the perspective of Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory by doing a case study on Ang Lee’s Family Trilogy. It is hoped that this thesis could initiate a new way to analyze and illustrate diversities of family value between China and western countries and could be useful in promoting the success of intercultural communication.