InterculturalCommuication英语论文.docx

Intercultural Communication Cultural differences on politeness between western and Chinese can be found in many aspects of daily communication, including addressing, greeting and parting, compliments, apologies, thanks, etc. 1. Greeting and Parting When people meet acquaintances or friends, people usually greet each other. The purpose of greeting is to establish or maintain social contact. So formulaic expressions are often used, but such formulaic expressions often causes conflict because of the great cultural differences between Chinese and native English speakers. In English, people often employ the following expressions to greet each other “Good morning/evening/afternoon. “Fine day, isn’t it? ” “How’s everything going?” “Have you eaten yet?” What are you going to do?” “Where have you been?” etc. Westerners treat them as real question. While in Chinese, we always say “Have you had dinner?”“What are you going?” to show our consideration. Parting may be divided into two steps. Before the final prating, there is usual a leave-taking. Western and Chinese cultures have diverse ways to deal with leave-takings. Firstly, in English society, during the closing phase of an encounter, from” I” perspective, reasons for terminating the encounter are presented in mediatory comments. Typical comments are associated with expressions of apology, such as “I” am afraid I must be off, I have to relieve the baby-sitter” etc. 2.Form of address Every country has its own way to address people. In the process of cross-cultural communication, we have to be cautious enough to choose the right form of address according to other people’s culture. Case (1) (A Chinese student greets his foreign teacher) Student: “Hello, Teacher Hedges.” Analyses: In china, it’s quite natural for students to call their teachers by combing the title of the profession and the first name. But in western countries, especially in Ameri