Cultural Conflicts in Verbal Communication Between China and the West In China, people think the individual should belong to the collective, and it is common for people to ask their friends personal questions when they have a chat. The nation of privacy is not so strong as that of the western people.Chinese always think that asking others personal questions is a good way to show friendliness. For example, Chinese people always want to know other people’s age, occupation, even incomes when they meet for first time.But in the west, privacy and personal space are very important. The western people would not like to mention excessive personal affairs to other people. When two western people meet,they always begin their communication by talking about the weather,or other public thing,such as news,TV series,sports games and so on.But when two Chinese meet around meal time, they often say“Have you had a meal？”(吃了没？),or if they haven’t see each other for a long time, they would begin their topic by saying “Oh, you are thinner/fatter than before”,“where are you going?”and so on.The Chinese believe that asking others private questions can show they care about the counterparts and it is also a good method to begin a conversation. 2.3. Differences in the Animal Words People live with various kinds of animals for a long history,and words for animals usually have the same denotations in different language,but very often with different connotation.For example, the term dog elicits different feelings in these two cultures,too.In China gou (dog) often has derogative meanings, such as狗急跳墙，狗仗人势，狼心狗肺，狗腿子,etc.But the animal“dog”in the West is considered the best friend of man,which is well established in their culture. So the western people feel disgusted at eating dog meat. Long is a symbol of the emperor in ancient China. It represents the almighty power to the Chinese.Today long is often identified with China or Chinese. For example, the Chinese often refer to them as the descendants of the long.Many Chinese parents 望子成龙―longing to see their sons to be longs,that is, be successful.The Chinese long has been rendered in English as “dragon”.However in the west,dragon is a fire-spitting monster,cruel and fierce that destroys everything and therefore must be destroyed, for this reason, this translation is inappropriate. That is why the English version of “亚洲四小龙”is“The Four Tigers of Asia” instead of “The Four Dragons of Asia”. 3.Ways to Encourage Cross-cultural Communication The previous section shows that there are potential problems in cross-cultural communication. 3.1. Being Conscious of One’s Own Culture Knowing one’s own culture is necessary for developing cultural awareness required for effective intercultural communication,because what people bring to the communication event greatly influences the success or failure of the event. So firstly, people have to identify their attitudes, prejudice,and opinions. Knowing one’s own likes,dislikes,and degrees of personal ethnocentrism enables people to place them out in the open so that people can detect the ways in which these attitudes influence communication. 3.2. Appreciating Similarities and Respecting Differences It is true that cultures are different due to a host of factors, but it doesn’t mean that there are no similarities or commonalities.To the contrary, human beings share a series of crucial characteristics that link people of different countries or cultures together. For example,people share the same planet for a long period of time.People all desire to be free from external restraint:the craving for freedom is basic,though the freedom can be of different degrees and with various implications. There are generally two attitudes toward differences.One is to take differences as polar opposites;the other is to see them as being different in degrees.In cross-cultural communication,most people think the latter attitude is reasonable,that is people have a lot in common,although they vary greatly by different cultures. References: [1]Larry A.Samovar, Richard E. Porter and Lisa A.Stefani,Communication Between Cultures[M].上海:外语教学与探讨出版社.汤姆森学习出版社 [2]何其亮,张晔.英释中国传统文化[M].杭州：浙江大学出版社 [3]余卫华.跨文化探讨读本[M].武汉：武汉大学出版社，2017 [4]张爱琳.跨文化交流[M].重庆:重庆大学出版社，2017 [5]周义.中西文化比较[M].北京：人民教育出版社，2004 |
