Differences between Chinese and Western Culture

A General Approach to the Differences between Chinese and Western Culture

Just as Benjamin Lee Whorf’s hypothesis suggests, our language helps mold our way of thinking and consequently, different language probably express our unique ways of understanding the world. There exist great differences between eastern and western cultures, which may cause misunderstanding or failure in cross-cultural communication. A native speaker can easily know the meaning of a word, a phrase or a sentence by his understanding of the utterance and cultural background. But it is not the case with the non-native speaker. Therefore, a Chinese English speaker’s awareness of cultures is the guarantee of correct understanding and proper using of English. The cultural background includes greetings, farewells, introductions, thanks and responses, apologies, regrets, invitations, prohibition and warnings, praises, taboos, value judgments and so on.

The following stories are often quoted to show the differences in Chinese and western culture. Once a group of Chinese were visiting the home of a fairly well-to-do American. As they were shown around the house, they commented, “You have a very nice home. It’s so beautiful.” The hostess smile with obvious pleasure and replied in good American fashion “Thank you” ---- which caused surprise among some of her Chinese guests. Later, while conversing at the dinner table, the host remarked to the Chinese interpreter, a young lady who had graduated not long ago from a Chinese university, “Your English is excellent.” To this she demurred, “No, no. My English is quite poor. ”---- an answer that he hadn’t expected and found a bit puzzling. The story does not mean that the American hostess’s reply is immodest or the young Chinese interpreter’s remark insincere. The reason for such different reactions is the differences in customs and habits. These examples can shed light on the understanding of the differences between two cultures.

Most of our misunderstandings of other people are not due to the inability to hear them or to parse their sentences or to understand their words. A far more important source of difficulty in communication is that we so often fail to understand the speaker’s cultural background and his intention. Here are more examples. When we Chinese meet with a friend or someone else, we often say “Have you eaten?” which is a way of greeting. However, if the listener is an Englishman, this “Have you eaten?” has a different meaning, which means that you want to invite him for dinner.

Deeply influenced by the traditional culture, the Chinese appreciate politeness and modesty. They regard politeness as an issue of morality instead of a strategy in communication. Consequently, in some cases, they maintain politeness at the cost of truthfulness which results in the insincere expressions in Chinese communication. Take the responses to compliments as the example. The typical Chinese responses

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to compliments on one's excellence in certain skill, one's remarkable accomplishment, or the like are “No, no. There is nothing worthy of note”, “You are over-praising me”, “You may be joking”, etc, which, in many cases, are opposite to the fact or the real attitude of the speaker and will make the listener from other cultural background confused. Besides, in many cases, when a native speaker thanks the Chinese English-speaker for his/her kindness or a favor that has been done, the Chinese, out of his own cultural norms, may respond with “This is what I should do”, “Don't mention it” and “It's really nothing”, although he is taught to respond with “With pleasure” or “I'm glad to be of held” etc, which has no traces in his mother tongue.

Languages are differently equipped to express different real world relations, and they certainly do not express all aspects of meaning with equal ease. Different groups within each culture have different expectations about what kind of language is appropriate to particular situations. For example, during visits, when a native English speaker as host show hospitality and offers a Chinese visitor a cup of coffee or a tin of sprite, the visitor often replies “Please do not take the trouble” or “No, thanks” when he actually means to accept the kind offer. These are typical Chinese responses to offers. The guest pretends to save the host trouble by making such offers, and the host will appear even more hospitable if he insists. While politely rejecting, the guest understands well that the host will show further politeness and continue the offer, which is quite different from western culture, because they will accept or decline such hospitality in accordance with their real intention.

In concrete communicating situations, a great many factors will affect someone to choose different kinds of expressions. However, because of cultural differences, misunderstanding may arise, although the language used in communication may be faultless. Different contexts ask for different language forms in consideration of different cultures, or the purpose of language communication cannot be achieved. To communicate effectively with the native speakers, the learners should know the difference between cultures and develop their cultural background knowledge.

References:

Peter Dash, Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Failure: A Definitional Analysis with Implications for Classroom

Teaching, Asian EFL Journal.

Liu Shaozhong, 2002, Studies on Negative Pragmatic Transfer in Interlanguage Pragmatics, Guangxi

Normal University Journal, NO.3

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Zhai Miqian, 2003, Politeness Principle and the Cross-cultural Pragmatic Failure, M.A. Dissertation, Hebei

Normal University.

丁往道，1997，英语写作手册（中文版），北京：外语教学与研究出版社。

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