CuluralComparisonsofAnimalWordsbeweenChineseandEnglish_开题报告

Animals are considered to be good friends of human beings. They play indispensable roles in people’s daily life. Language and culture are inseparable. Language is an important part of culture . Any language reflects the unique characteristics of the language group.

People associate animals with natural phenomena, personalities and emotions. They play very important role in the life of human beings, so do animal words in language. They are closely linked with mankind, even the human languages have been deeply influenced by animals. As far back as creating the word time, our ancestor created a lot of pictographic characters according to the appearance of the animal, such as fish, dog, bird, etc. With the development of human civilization, these animal words have been endowed with more meanings and made up more words. For example, bully people by flaunting one's powerful connections(狐假虎威), wait for windfalls(守株待兔). Likewise, there are a large number of animal words in English, too. However, even if tow words refer to the same animal in Chinese and English, they have different meanings due to the influence of different factors, such as history and region. This makes animal words with rich and various cultural connotations often result in misunderstanding in cross cultural communication. And so many animal vocabularies have special meanings in each language and form unique cultures of animal.

As there are numerous animal words in every language and each has the different cultural connotation, it is possible that it result in misunderstanding in cross cultural communication. In order to have a better understanding about the animal words in different culture, I will describe two parts of the animal words. The first second part is the different cultural connotations between the Chinese and English. The second is the courses that make the different connotation in two cultures.

In the first category , Although there are many languages and there are many different words to express the same animals, people also think different about them. That is because the same animal has the different cultural connotation in different nationalities. Sometimes, a kind of animal only has certain meaning in one language; sometimes, both in two languages, the same animal have different cultural connotation; sometimes, two different kinds animal have the same cultural connotation. The situation is complicated, so people had better to know cultural connotations well to avoid misunderstanding in communication..

In the second category, Language is a mirror of culture, which reflects its specific cultural feature. Animal expressions have different cultural connotations in English and in Chinese. What are the main reasons causing such differences in cultural connotations? English and Chinese animal expressions convey different cultural features and messages of their own nations, and reflect their own cultures. The factors causing differences of cultural connotations will be discussed. we can know that people with different cultural backgrounds often entrust language with different implications because of geographical position, customs, region, and history.

Cultural difference is a complicated problem. Therefore, it is impossible to cover a thorough analysis to every cultural phenomenon in this thesis. We have just probed into the cultural connotations of animal words. Culture-related problems about connotations of animal words are so complicated that there is still a lot of work to do and we should spare no effort to make a further study of it.

Introduction

2. Cultural connotation of animal words in Chinese and English

2.1. The definition of cultural connotation 

2.2. The identical animal words with unique cultural connotation only in one language

2.3 .Different animal words share the similar cultural connotation

2.4 .Identical animal words with similar cultural connotation

3. The reasons influencing connotations of two cultures

3.1. Different region and belief

3.2. Geography

3.3. Local custom

3.4 .History

4.Conclusion

5. References

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