看中国和美国的文化差异

A Comparison of Culture between China

and America

中美文化的比较

考生来源：呼和浩特

编号：

准考证号：010*********

姓名：于璐

指导老师：

日期：2012年4月日

Abstract: Euphemism is one kind of figures of speech, and it refers to the substitution of mild or vague or roundabout expression for harsh or direct one. With the development of the human society, euphemism plays a more and more important role in our daily life. Euphemism is a common language strategy in communication. This paper is based on the contrastive analysis and designed to study the definition, pragmatic function, history of euphemism and its usage in common life. This paper focuses on the different attitudes towards birth, death, age, aesthetic sense and so on between Chinese and American people, and the analysis of the social foundation of these differences, in order to represent the influence of different ideology background, that is, Christianity in America and Confucianism in China. Through this paper, the reader could understand the cultural differences better and achieve smooth cross-cultural communication.

Key words: euphemisms cultural differences comparison Conclusion Privacy

摘要：委婉语是一种修辞，它主要是指用温和的、模糊的或迂回的表达方式来

代替苛刻的或直接的表达方式。随着人类社会的发展，委婉语在我们的日常生活中扮演越来越重要的角色。委婉语在交际中是一种通用的语言策略。这篇论文是基于对委婉语的对比分析，旨在研究委婉语的定义、语用功能、历史以及其在日常生活中的应用。本文着重对比中国人和美国人在出生、死亡、年龄、审美意识等方面的不同态度，并分析这些不同点的社会基础，主要是为了呈现美国的基督教和中国的儒家思想对不同的意识形态背景所产生的影响。通过本文，读者可以更好地了解文化差异并实现流畅的跨文化交流。

关键词：委婉语，文化，差异，对比，结论，隐私。

Content

1. Introduction-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------4

2. A brief introduction of euphemism------------------------------------------------------4 2. 1 The definition of euphemism----------------------------------------------------------- 2. 2 A brief history of English and Chinese euphemism------------------------------- 2. 2.1 A brief history of English euphemism----------------------------------------------

2.2.2 A brief history of Chinese euphemism---------------------------------------------

3. The cultural differences between China and America viewed from

euphemism----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Introduction

With the development of the world, cross-cultural communication grows to be a necessity in everyone’s life. As we know, the definition of culture is that “it is the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning.” *1+ Chinese and Americans are born to different cultures and they are different in many aspects, so cultural differences are the hinder of the cross-cultural communication and how to clear away the obstacle has become the problem that the world has to face.

Owing to the creation and development of the language, human culture could transmit from generation to generation. Language is not only the carrier of culture, but also the representative of it. Language is influenced by culture, and it reflects culture. The understanding of one requires the understanding of the other.

In the long period of evolution and practice, human beings have been knowing and remaking the objective world, and in the meantime they have been establishing and developing their own languages and cultures, thus forming various language patterns and cultural communities.

As part of language, euphemisms have existed throughout recorded history and with the development of society, it permeates every field. Euphemisms are “mild, pleasant or inoffensive expressions substituted for harsh, blunt, coarse or unpleasant ones.” *2+The reasons why people use them are complicated. Sometimes they are used for avoiding taboos; and sometimes they are used for being polite or considering the feelings of other people. “Without euphemisms, the world comes to a halt because of the frication and resentments would arise among people.”*3+How to use and understand euphemism becomes more and more important nowadays. As a matter of fact, it is a mirror that reflects its own culture, so the study of euphemism may clear away the obstacle in certain degree. There are abundant euphemisms both in Chinese and English and they flourish in different cultures. Since there are different cultures, different comprehension of euphemism might cause the conflict between these two peoples. So through the study of euphemism, we can have a better understanding of the cultural differences between Chinese and American, and then communicate better during the process.

2. A brief introduction of euphemism

2.1 The definition of euphemism

The word “euphemism” comes from a Greek word, “eu-” meaning “good” and “-pheme” meaning “speech” or “saying”, and thus its literary meaning is “a good speech or good saying”. Later on, euphemism is defined differently and more precisely. In the New Edition of the Oxford Concise Dictionary （1976 ）, it is described

as “substitution of mild or vague or roundabout expression for harsh or direct one.” *4+ It is taken as “the substitution of supposedly milder or more decent language for what is felt to be harsh or unseemly” by English linguistic Thomas Pyles in his Word and Expressions of American English. [5] In China, the first definition of euphemism was given by famous writer ,Chen Wangdao（陈望道,1890 —1977 ）in his 《修辞学发凡》，the definition being that “one kind of figures of speech, saying something indirectly, but connoting and substituting with roundabout and implicit words or even metaphorical expression. ”( 委婉是修辞的一种，即说话不直白本意，