跨文化交际课程第二单元

Elements of Communication
1. Context 2. Participants 3. Messages (Meanings, Symbols, Encoding and Decoding) 4. Channels 5. Noise 6. Feedback
Unit 2 Discovering Problems
Case 8 (Page 62)
When the Chinese girl Amy fell in love with an American boy at that time, it seems that she preferred to celebrate Chritmas in the American way, for she wanted very much to appear the same as other American girls. She did not like to see her boyfriend disappointed at the “shabby” Chinese Christmas. That’s why she cried when she found out her parents had invited the minister’s family over for the Christmas Eve dinner. She thought the menu for the Chritmas meal created by her mother a strange one because there were no roast turkey and sweet potatoes but only Chinese food. How could she notice then the food chosen by her mother were all her favorites?
公示语翻译的文化问题。
（P56）（见参考图片）
Unit 2 Matching Task
合作原则
（P57）（见参考资料）
Unit 2 Group Work
案例分析
Hale Waihona Puke Baidu
（见参考资料friendship）
Case 5 (Page 60)
Analysis: The Chinese guide should refuse the first offer because he is obeying the Chinese rules for communication. We Chinese are modest, polite and well-behaved . Maybe the guide is waiting for a second or third offer of beer, but he doesn’t know the reasons behind the rule in American culture that you do not push alcoholic beverages on anyone. A person may not drink for religious reasons, he may be a reformed alcoholic, or he may be allergic. Whatever the reason, you do not insist on offering alcohol. So they politely never made a second offer of beer to the guide.
A definition of our own that is more suitable to the goals of this book:
We define “culture” as the deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, actions, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and artifacts acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
Case 7 (Page 62)
Analysis: Keiko insists on giving valuable gifts to her college friends, because in countries like Japan, exchanging gifts is a strongly rooted social tradition. Should you receive a gift, and don’t have one to offer in return, you will probably create a crisis. If not as serious as a crisis, one who doesn’t offer a gift in return may be considered rude or impolite. Therefore, in Japan, gifts are a symbolic way to show the care, respect, gratitude and further friendship. Keiko’s college friends would rather round up some of the necessary items and they are willing to have her use them. They really expected nothing from her. For in America, people donate their used household items to church or to the community. They would never consider these old items as gifts to Keiko. So Keiko’s valuable gifts have made her American friends feel uncomfortable.
补充“文化”的概念：
Culture is a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning. This definition includes not only patterns of behavior but also patterns of thought, artifacts, and the culturally transmitted skills and techniques used to make the artifacts. (Bates and Plog)
Case 8 (Page 62)
From this case, we can find a lot of differences between the Chinese and Western cultures in what is appropriate food for a banquet, what are good table manners, and how one should behave to be hospitable. However, one should never feel shame just because one’s culture is different from others’. As Amy’s mother told her, you must be proud to be different, and your only shame is to have shame.
Unit II
Culture and Communication
The analysis of this case: (Page 38) The least three things among the following Tom did that were regarded to be impolite: b. Tom opens the gift as soon as he is presented with it. d. Tom does not make a second offer of drinks when they refuse the first. e. Tom talks about the cost of living in the U.S.A. f. Tom does not ask them to stay longer when they say they must be leaving. g. Tom does not go out to see them off.
Case 6 (Page 61)
When a speaker says something to a hearer,there are at least three kinds of meanings involved: utterance meaning, the speaker’s meaning and the hearer’s meaning. In the dialogue, when Litz asked how long her mother-in-law was going to stay, she meant that if she knew how long she was going to saty in Finland, she would be able to make proper arrangements for her, such as taking her out to some sightseeing. However, her mother-in-law took Litz’s question to mean “Litz does not want me to saty for long”. From the Chinese point of view, it seems inappropriate for Litz to ask such a question just two days after her mother-in-law’s arrival. If she has to ask the question, it would be better to ask some time later and she should not let her mother-in-law hear it.