The culture difference between English and Chinese kinship terms 英语专业毕业论文.doc

The culture difference between English and Chinese kinship terms Abstract: The culture difference between English and Chinese kinship terms lies on the division of patriarchal and non-patriarchal clans, details and omissions of paterchal and maternal kinships terms, elder-younger relations and seniority order, blood relations by marriage, construction of derivatives, generalization. In non-kinship terms (social address forms), Chinese has more complex address words, as well as in the usage of respect and humility. The reasons of such phenomenon are the different histories, concepts of bearing, concepts of friendships, as well as the different beliefs. Key words: kinship term, social address form, cultural difference 摘 要：英汉亲属称谓词在区分宗族与非宗族、父系与母系、长幼辈分、姻亲与血亲、派生词的使用、泛化方面有明显的区别；在社会称谓中， 汉语表达的词汇相对丰富，敬语与谦语的使用也更频繁。造成这种现象的差异是两民族的历史、生育观念、友谊观念和信仰观念结构的不同。 关键词：亲属称谓、社会称谓、文化差异 Introduction The exact nature of the relationship between language and culture has fascinated, and continues to fascinate, people form a wide variety of backgrounds. A few words are necessary concerning what we mean by “culture”. We intend to use it in the sense of whatever a person must know in order to function in a particular society. Goodenough’s definition (1957, p. 167): “a society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner accept for any one of themselves’ culture, therefore, is the ’know-how’ that a person must poses to get through the task of daily living.” One long-standing claim concerning the relationship between language and culture is that the structure of a language views the world and the concept of them. This claim usually associates with the linguist Endward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf. Whorfian hypothesis is widely adopted by linguists all over the world. Sapir acknowledged the close relationship between language and culture, maintaining that they were inextricably related so that you could not understand or ap