高中英语教学中的文化意识培养(1)(3)
2015-07-04 01:27
导读：Cultural differences can also be found in the way people address their relatives. There are no English equivalents to the different forms of Chinese address like “堂弟”, “表姐”, “伯父”
Cultural differences can also be found in the way people address their relatives. There are no English equivalents to the different forms of Chinese address like “堂弟”, “表姐”, “伯父”, “舅舅”. But only “cousin” and “uncle” in English are used to address. The difference of relative address reflects the different customs in the two cultures. For Chinese people, the paternal relatives are closer than the maternal ones, thus it is greatly important to distinguish who is who. However, in American culture, it does not matter much whether a person is a relative from the father’s family or from the mother’s family. “Uncle” stands for all the males of the same generation of father and “aunt” for all the females of the same generation of mother.
Some students may ask their English teacher a question, “Why should the pronoun ‘I’ always be capitalized in English?” Because in China, when a person mentions himself in formal situations, particularly in the writings of old style, he would use “鄙人”, “在下” and words like that to degrade himself. Students should be told that Chinese culture is family-centered. Usually, several generations of a family live together. In a large family, the young should obey what the old commanded. Under such circumstances, it’s quite common and natural for a person to degrade himself. In contrast, American put great emphasis on individualism. According to Chinese tradition and customs, people believe in collectivism. Different countries have different system of values. The always capitalized pronoun “I” and the fact that Chinese students feel puzzled about it shows the conflicting values of the two nations.
In China, elderly people like to be called “老李”, “老王”, from which they feel they are much respected and therefore greatly satisfied. China is a country in which old people are respected. The older a person is, the more respected he is. Students are told to avoid such words as “old” and “elderly” when communicating with English native speakers. In this situation, they are also puzzled. Because Chinese students may not quite know that Americans hate to be called “the old”. In America, they say “senior citizen” instead of “old people”, “adults’ home” instead of “old people’s home”.
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3.2Gratitudes and compliments
It is noted that a striking difference resulted from the two cultures is the different responses to gratitude and compliments. “People in the west tend to verbalize their gratitude and compliments more than Chinese speakers and that the westerners tend to accept gratitude and compliments more directly and frankly than we Chinese do. ”[5] When a native speaker of English expresses his gratitude, we Chinese people feel embarrassed and sometimes say “No, it’s nothing.” to turn down his thanks. However, English speakers in a similar situation would say “I am glad that, I can help you” or “ it’s my pleasure” to accept thanks.
Similarly, many Chinese people will feel embarrassed when they hear compliments like “You look nice on this dress!” or “You speak fluent English!” To show that they are modest and do not deserve such a compliment, they would say “No, not at all”. But for English speaking people, they think it almost dishonest to deny an expression of sentiment they agree with. So unlike the Chinese people, the English natives will accept compliments by giving a positive answer like “Thank you”.
