cross-cultural communication辅导（2）跨文化交际胡文仲视频演讲稿（含重点和PPT内容）Hello, every one, this is the second talk, intercultural communication. In this talk, we will be talking about verbal communication. verbal communication is communication using words. we will be talking about language and culture and their relationships. There is a very close relationship between language and culture. In Arab, there are many words related to camel. Because camel used to be a very important part of the life of Arabs. In the Chinese language, there is an elaboratesystem of kinship terms. Because Chinesefamilies used to be large and hierarchical.We care about whether the grandmother is on the father side or on the mother side. If it is on the side of mother, it is called外祖母. If it is on the side of the father, it is called祖母. But in English, normally, they do not have such distinction. In Chinese, we make a distinction between哥哥and弟弟. Because哥哥has more authorship than弟弟. But in English, normally, they just use brother to refer to either哥哥or弟弟.From this we can see, language is very much influenced by culture. Language is a mirror of culture, because language reflects human relationships. It reflects the way the society operates. Firth thing is language of kinship terms is a reflection of our family system. As a matter of fact, language is a part of the culture or we can say language is culture. There is no doubt there is a very close relationship between language and culture. Some people go even further and claim that language determines the way we think.This is what we call linguistic determinism(语言决定主义——语言决定了我们思考的方式。
).It based upon hypothesis put forward by Sapir and Whorf. Now here we have Sapir and Whorf hypothesis. This is whatSapir says: Now, here, we should spend special attention to this: it powerfully conditions all our thinking about social problems and processes. that is, it influences our thinking greatly.This is what Sapir said in one of the books he wrote on language. His idea is language influences the way we think, influences our thinking processes.His student is Whorf. This is what Whorf said about the influences of language on people’s thinking.What he said is basically this: language influences the way we think, and language influences the way we perceive nature, we analyze society. Now let’s have some example.Eskimo has three words for snow. For falling snow, there is one word. And for fallen snow, there is another word. And then for the snow which is packed into ice. So in Eskimo, there are three words for snow. While we see English, there is only one word for snow. And if you want to describe this kind of snow, you have to use another word. You will have to use falling snow. And for this one, you will have to use fallen snow. Now because snow is very important to Eskimos, so they make distinctions between different kinds of snow. And Whorf’s idea is in their language, there are three different words of snow. And that influences the way they look at things. That is they look at snow different form us. We just take snow as one kind of snow. While they make very fine distinctions between falling snow, fallen snow and snow packed into ice.Now here Hopi, Hopi is another example. It is an Indian tribe in north America. Now in Hopi, in the language of Hopi, they don’t make the distinction between certain things like airplane, a dragonfly and a pilot. Anything that flies is masa taka. masa taka refers to either an airplane or a dragonfly or a pilot. Now this seems to be pretty absurd to us. But to them, this is very natural. They think anything that flies is the same. And, according to Whorf, because they only have one word for anything that flies, so they tend to not make clear distinctions between these flying things.Here is another example from Hopi. Now in Hopi, when he wants to say: “he is running” or “he ran”. He just says “walr”. “walr” refers to both present, continuous and past. They don’t make distinctions between the two. But in English, as we know, the distinctions between the continuous and past is a very important one. They are very different. One refers to an action that is taking place. One refers to an action that took place in the past. So, according to Whorf, the Hopis do not make distinctions between a past action and an action that is taking place. Because in their language, there is no difference. They just have one form for both.Now in Navaho, Navaho is an another Indian tribe in north America. there is no distinction between horse, singular, and horses, plural. And there is no distinction between his/her/its/ and their. But in English, of course, we do make distinctions between horse and horses, his or her or its or their. Because in Navaho, they don’t have distinctions between singular and plural, according to Whorf, the way they look at singular things and plural things are influenced by their language. That is, the distinctions between singular and plural are not an important one to Hopis. But to us, it is very important. A singular refers to just one thing whereas plural refers to more than one.When Sapir and Whorf put forward this hypothesis about “linguistic determinism”. There are some scholars disagreed with them. And Gail Robison is one of them. This is what Robison says: “First, it is difficult to conclude form such linguistic evidence that users of different languages perceive the world differently. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it is difficult to conclude that different language use is the ‘cause’ of difference in perception. We are back to the chicken-egg dilemma. Later research in the perception of color actually shows that users of a particular language can distinguish between different hues even when their language does not have terms to label the distinction.”Now what she means is what actually this, in your language, Robison talked about different colors. In your language, there may be just four colors. But when you actually see five colors, you can still distinguish them. It is not that in your language, there are four colors, so when you see five different colors, you can’t tell the difference. So, from this example, Gail Robison wants to show that “linguistic determinism” has no foundation.First, it has a very powerful impact on vocabulary of our language.And that is impact on language at lexical level. And then at pragmatic(语用学) level, there are also many impacts on language. We will give more examples of this as we go on. And thirdly, c ulture’s impact on discoursal(语篇) level. Finally , at stylistic(语体) level, culture also exerts its influences.Next, we will be talking about culture’s impact on language at lexical level. First, we look at the denotation and connotation ofwords. What is denotation? Denotation is the dictionary definition of a word. A lot of words have two layers of meanings. It is denotation meaning and connotative meaning. Denotation is “原意”. Connotation is “引申的意义”or extended meaning or associated meaning. Connotative meaning have developed over time. First through use by poets and writers. Some words acquired some extended meanings. So we are mostly concerned about the denotation meaning. And sometimes, we do not really care about the connotative meaning. First thing, with science terms, we only care about its denotation meaning. And in fact, most of the science words have only the denotation meaning. They don’t actually carry connotative meaning. But words in general use often acquire connotative meaning. That is extended meaning.First thing, once mother is the woman who gave birth to the person. So this is the original meaning of mother. But the word mother has also extended meanings, such as ‘love’, ‘naturing’, ‘kindness’etc. now these are connotative meanings of the word, mother. In 1982, professor Yu Guozhang published an article called culturally loaded words in English language teaching. In this article, he points out the differences between English words and Chinese words in terms of cultural loading. What he means by cultural loading? It is actually the extended meaning of a word. He has given a lot of examples in his article. If you are interested, you can look it up. It is a very important article because it is the first article published in early 80s, the cultural loaded words. Ever since he published this article, there have been many articles published on the connotative meaning. Of words. And this is an very important area of vocabulary study.Now we have just said, the words has extended meanings because poets and writers have used them in their essays and extended the meanings of the words. Now let’s look at a poem written by Li Bai. And Li Bai, of course, is a poet that we are all very familiar with. And this is a very well-known poem too.So you look up on the moon, and you look down and you miss your home. So here the moon is a associate with one’s home or one’s hometown. And then wehave a poem of Du Fu. So the moon in your hometown is the brightest. And in this poem, Du Fu also relate the moon to one’s home or one’s hometown. When a lot of poets used the moon in this connection with such extended meaning. Then gradually, the word moon has acquired this connotative meaning which is home or hometown. So in china, we have autumn festival. And this is a festival in which a members of the family are supposed to have a family reunion.But the English word ‘moon’does not have such connotative meaning. So probably, when you in the united states,when a child looks at the moon, he doesn’t think of his home or his hometown. He may think of someday, landing on the moon, or use space shuffle to get to the moon. So this cultural meaning of the moon in relation to one’s hometown is peculiar to the Chinese language or is peculiar to the Chinese culture.Now, here we can compare a few Chinese and English words in terms of culture loading. The word “owl” is “猫头鹰”. In English, “owl” refers to a bird and “owlish”is the adjective of “owls”. It means wise. So it is a good word. When somebody is compared to an owl, he is looked upon as a very wise person. First you can say, he looks owlish. That means he looks wise. But in Chinese, “猫头鹰” is a bird that is supposed to bring bad luck. And if you see a “猫头鹰”, for instance, at night in the forests, you think that you probably your luck would come upon you and your family. So itis a symbol of bad luck. Now, in another case, for instance, the “cricket” , “cricket” in English, is a happy insect. We can say as merry as a cricket. We have cricket on the half by Charles Dickens. But in Chinese, “蟋蟀”and “球虫”signifying the coming of autumn, so there is always a feeling of sadness attached to it. so the cultural loading of “cricket” in English and “蟋蟀” in Chinese is different.Now, “dragon”in English refers to a fire-spitting mythical animal, it signifies fierceness. So if somebody says he is a bit of dragon. It means he is a fierce person. But the Chinese word “龙”refers to mythical animal which is often identified with China or the Chinese. The way we refer us “龙的传人”, for instance.Now, here we have two groups of words, whose denotation meaning and connotation meaning are the same.Now the word “sun” in English and Chinese word “太阳” refer to the same planet body. They also have the same connotation meaning. because when we say “太阳”, we think of brightness, we think of something good. We use the “sun” is the same. And the “Dove” in English is often related to peace. And in Chinese, “鸽子”, we also use this word to refer to the peace. So, here, the denotation meaning and connotation meaning of the “dove”in English and “鸽子”in Chinese are the same. The same with “fox”and “狐狸”. In English, “fox” often implies canny. And in Chinese, “狐狸” also often implies canny. So in this case, we do not tend to make mistakes. Because their denotation meaning and connotation meaning are the same. Or, basically are the same. Now lets’ see the second group of the words. In this case, it’s a bit different. The denotation meaning remains the same, while connotation meaning has changed.Now, first, we have word owl in English. in Chinese we have “猫头鹰”. They refer to the same bird. That is, the denotation meaning is the same. But as we have said, the connotation meanings of these two words are very different. “owl” does not have negative meaning, but “猫头鹰”has a negative meaning. Now “cricket” and “蟋蟀” are the same. And finally, we have “willow” and“杨柳”. “willow” in English does not have many associations while “杨柳” in Chinese have many associations. It may refer to a very beautiful young woman.And then the third group of words.Dragon does not refer to the same kind of mystical creature as “龙”. Western idea of dragon is very different from Chinese idea of “龙”. So sometimes in some dictionaries, when they refer to “龙”, they use “Chinese dragon”. Just a bit of different form the western concept of the dragon. “propaganda” “宣传” seem to be equivalent. But they are different. in Chinese, “宣传” is not a bad word. We have got the “宣传部”. And the chairman Mao said in his works “宣传群众，组织群众”. So “宣传” is not a bad word in Chinese. Probably “propaganda”has a negative meaning. It means the spreading of force, exaggerating information in order to gain favor and support. So when we sue these words, “propaganda”in English, normally, it has a bad meaning, a bad connotation. but Chinese word “宣传”does not have many negative connotation. It’s very interesting to compare “intellectual” with “知识分子”. We tend to think they are the same. We tend to translate “intellectual” into “知识分子”. But actually,“intellectual” in English and “知识分子” in Chinese are not the same. In our dictionary, “知识分子”is defined as someone has a higher educational level who does a brain work, such as scientist, teachers, doctors, journalists and engineers. And in English dictionary, “intellectual” is defined as an intellectual educated person who spend a lot of time studying and complicating ideas. And sometimes the intellectual is described as someone who like to devote to theoretical issue and who is often divorce from reality. So in Chinese, when we use “知识分子”, we firstly think of scientist, teachers, doctors, journalists and engineers. But in English, a doctor is not an intellectual. A professor is intellectual. But not an engineer. So Chinese intellectual, “知识分子”does not cover the same ground as the English intellectual . basically, the difference lies in cultural connotation. So the cultural connotation of “intellectual”is very different from cultural connotation of “知识分子”.Next we take up differences in pragmatic rules. Culture also exerts its influences on language in use. And this is what we mean by pragmatics. There are some difficulties of this. because there is not yet adequate research in this field. Some of the writings have already been published. For instance, there is a group of scholars who have devoted much time to studying in different speech acts and how they realized in different cultures. There is a study of requests and apologies across 7 countries. A request is a speech act and apology is also a speech act. A greeting is also a speech act. How do you make apology different from culture to culture. This is what they have basically studied. Jenny Thomas, a German professor has made up the distinction between what is called sociopragmatic failures and pragmalinguistic failures. I will give you some examples to show what is mean by sociopragmatic failures and pragmalinguistic failures. Theseterms are very ? but with few examples, you will find them very easy to understand.First, when you use an address form as a greeting, or “where are you going” as a greeting, you are actually transferring Chinese principle into English. and you make a pragmalinguistic error. in Chinese, we can greet someone by using an address form, for instance, when we meet professor Zhang, we can say “professor Zhang”. This is a greeting in Chinese. But in English, if you say “professor Zhang”, it is not a greeting. This is to catch his attention. So when you say “professor Zhang”,he will normally say “yes”. That is what is your question? How can I help you? but in Chinese, when you say张先生, it is a greeting. Or you would say刘老师, or张大妈. These are all greeting. But in English, these are not greetings. these are address forms to catch somebody’s attention. So, here, we can see it has to do with pragmatic rules, because pragmatic rules are different inChinese and in English. if you ask about question about age and income in English, you commit a sociopragmatic error. That is you transferred social rules in Chinese into English and you made that kind of mistakes. But of course today, even in china, I also think that it is inappropriate to ask somebody about his income or ask someone about his age. But in rural areas, there is no problem to ask his or her age. But in the cities among younger people, I think it is already crude to ask somebody about his or her age. So these are examples about sociopragmatic errors and pragmalinguistic errors.There have been some books published, for instance, look at thefirst book. this is what I refer to earlier. It is a study of speech acts across 7 countries. And the next book is cross-cultural pragmatics: the semantics of human interaction. This is also a study of pragmatic rule across cultures. But in china, there are a few books on this. you have to look around. There is one or two books on it, not too many. And also in terms of article, there is also only a few.And next we take the difference in discourse pattern. We distinguish the deductive pattern and the inductive pattern. The deductive pattern is from the general to the specific. And the inductive pattern is reverse. It is from the specific to the general.For instance, when you make a request, you want to ask somebody to join you for dinner. If you say something like this: “what about having dinner with me tomorrow night? I have few friends I’d like you like to meet. And tomorrow night is happened to be weekend.” This is more like a deductive pattern. That is you come out with your request immediately. You say “what about having dinner with me tomorrow night?” this is a direct request. And this is the main statement you want to make. And what follows are the reasons that you gave. But if we say something like: “tomorrow night is weekend. There are a couple of friends will come. I’d like you to meet them. So would you like to have dinner with me?” this is the reverse. And this is giving the reasons first to be followedby request or the general statement. And this is the inductive. Now of course, we have both deductive and inductive patterns in either speaking or writing. Inductive is “归纳”and deductive is “演绎”. These terms were originally used in philosophy. They are used as philosophical terms. And now people use these terms to describe the way you write, the way you speak. Whether you make the general statement first or whether you make the general statement last. Now here I give you some examples about deductive. This is a composition written by one of the students. The topic of the composition is The Benefits of Living with one’s Parents. And this what this person wrote, now I haven’t really got there everything. I have got the main points, but I left out a lot of the details. Because if we take the whole composition, it would be too long. But giving you all the main points, you can gather the main points what the seductive pattern is like. This is what he wrote. He beings hiscomposition with So this is the general statement. This is his main idea. And then he goes on to give the reasons. So form the general to the specific.these dots indicates that there are still a lot of details. But as I have said, I have left themout.and then he ends hiscomposition with this Now, I must say this is not a very good composition. Its written by somebody who has only learned English for two years. So his English is not the best. But his ideas are given clearly. He began his composition with a general statement, that is living with one’s parents has a lot of advantages. And then he say the firstreason, second reason, and third reason, and finally he sums up his composition. So this is a typical example of the deductive pattern(演绎法). This is the way some people write and some people speak. but there is another way which is the inductive(归纳法). Now here I will give you some examples. And these examples are really related to editor of journal. Let’s read this letter first.So after reading these sentences, we still don’t know what this person really want. we can make a guess, but we don’t really know what his main idea is. Because his main statement has not yet come out.The above is the main statement. so after saying all this, finally we come to his main point. I have sent you my essay and I hope you would revise it and publish it. he wants the editor to publish his article. But he doesn’t said it directly. He first gave a lot of details which lead to his main statement.So, he is a good example of i nductive pattern. And that is you begin your essay or what you want to say with a lot of details. And these details finally made up the main statement that you want to make. And some people like to use this inductive pattern.Now the popular conception in the world is westerns prefer the deductive pattern, because it is more direct. Orientals, such as Japanese, Chinese, Koreas prefer the inductive pattern which is indirect. Because Orientals do not wish to impose. This is a wide spread conception.Is this accurate? Is this correct? Now let’s see. Some people have made research in this field and they have found out some findings. One scholar in his book intercultural communication discourse approach have told us that both English and Chinese have recourse to the deductive and the inductive.This means it is not correct to say that deductive belongs to the westerners and inductive belongs to the Chinese. Now this is not correct. actually, bothEnglish and Chinese have the inductive as well as the inductive.Now I will explain what is mean by power difference. power difference refers to whether this person is your superior or whether there is great distance between you and him in terms of power. For instance, somebody is a very important leader, and you are nobody. And the power distance is great. In this case, when you say something, most probably, you would use the inductive pattern. you tend to be more indirect, because power distance is very great. And also you has to do with social distance, that is if this person is someone that you know very well, the social distance is very small. But if you meet someone who you hardly know or you don’t know at all, then the social distance is great. In this case, you tend to use the inductive instead of the deductive. First thing, if you talk to a very good friend of yours, if you want to invite him to have a coffee, you can say: “let’s go and have a coffee.”You don’t have invent a lot of reasons. Because he is a good friend of yours, the social distance is small, so you can come out with your request direct. But if you meet someone that youhardly know, if you want to invite him to have a coffee with you, then you have to say: “well, I wonder if you would be free tonight, you know, there is a very good coffee shop nearby. And if you have time, I would like to invite you to have a coffee with me.” So this is because you don’t know this person very well, so you have to put out a few filers because of this social distance. And wait our imposition for request, this refer to how big your request is. If it is a very big request, then you tend do use the inductive. And if it is a small request, then you tend to use thedeductive. This is what some of scholar have found from their researches. But this does not mean that the Chinese use the inductive only, and they do not use deductive. As I have said, there are three factors: power difference, social distance and the weight of imposition of request. Now you have to take all these three factors into your consideration. Now, some books have been published in this area.Linda Young cross-talk in sino-american communication and Suzanne Scollon intercultural communication: a discourse approach and Stella Ting Toomey communicating effectively with the Chinese. These books all have sessions dealing with the discussion of discourse patterns.The differences in style, the most obvious differences in style is, in English today, we prefer a rather plain style. Whereas in Chinese, sometimes, we sue forward freezes. We tend to use more allusions and quotations. And some people tend to think that our witting is a bit of flowery. Because of we have used these. but of course, it depends on what you write.So in this talk , we have discussed culture and communication. the culture loading of words, and the differences in discourse patterns in pragmatic rules, and also in some other aspects. I hope you will go back and go over these points and try to have a good cross of them.。
