A Contrastive Cultural Analysis Of Chinese And American Direct Verbal Communication Behavior

It is well known that American verbal communication is characterized with directness, while Chinese verbal communication is featured by indirectness. Many researchers have done a lot of researches on the comparison between the two from various aspects. However, direct verbal communication behavior do also exist widely in Chinese culture, and the phenomenon receives little attention. Also there is a shortage of research on the comparison between American direct verbal communication behavior and Chinese direct verbal communication behavior. The present study aims at making a complementary contribution to intercultural verbal communication by having a try to make a comparison between American and Chinese direct verbal communication behavior.Direct communication involves transmitting verbal messages that clearly show speakers' true intentions in the discourse process, and direct speech acts are the basic units of direct communication. Therefore, in this thesis, direct verbal communication behavior mainly refers to a kind of communication that transmits verbal messages without hiding speaker's true intentions, and to compare the two is mainly to compare direct speech acts in the two languages. The first concern of this thesis is to identify under which kind of social relationship Chinese tend to choose direct verbal communication behavior. The second concern is to see under which kind of social relationship Americans tend to choose direct verbal communication behavior. The third one is to find whether there are differences or similarities exist between their tendencies toward direct verbal communication behavior under various social relationships, and if there are some, then what they are. The last concern is to find what cultural reasons under these differences and similarities. To answer all these questions, the author, adopting a questionnaire of direct speech acts, makes both quantitative and qualitative analyses of direct verbal communication behavior in American and Chinese cultures with intercultural theories and pragmatic theories. Data were collected from some American and Chinese college students with the questionnaire. After the analysis, the study came up with the following major findings:1. The main feature of Chinese direct verbal communication behavior is that most Chinese subjects tend to choose direct verbal communication behavior under the social relationship of small distance, large distance, and the relationship of middle distance and higher relative power.