A Comparative Study Of English And Chinese Proverbs

Proverbs are popular sayings that contain advice and state a generally accepted truth. As a reflector of culture, proverbs can be found in abtmdance in every people's language. It is no exaggeration to say that exploring the proverbs of a language is one of the feasible approaches through which one can penetrate deeply into the mentality and customs of its people. Just as literary works are a mirror of the culture of a people, this is all the case of proverbs sentences coined by the people themselves, and transmitted orally from generation to generation, as genuine expression of popular wisdom. This paper attempts to decode the similarities and differences of the proverbs of the English and Chinese languages from the perspective of linguistic features and cultural connotations, by analyzing respectively the relations between the external linguistic features (rhetoric, surface structure, and semantic) and the outer cultural level (concrete physical culture and social culture), and the relations between the internal linguistic characteristics (the origin of the language characters, people's cognitive schemes, and people's ways of thinking) and the deep-rooted cultural connotations (values of moral and life). Based on the plentiful and pitchy examples extracted from classical literatures and philosophy of life of the two ancient languages, and classic modem advertising words of the world famous brand products, the paper provides illuminating insights about Chinese and English proverbs from the perspective of two cultures. Chapter One gives a general view of the definitions of the proverb and culture and their relationship. Chapter Two throws a linguistic and cultural light on the proverbs of the both languages, by analyzing their similar origins and their explicit linguistic features. Chapter Three applies a cultural contrast to English and Chinese proverbs by discussing four major cultural pattems: individualism vs. collectivism, equality vs. hierarchy, assertiveness vs. interpersonal harmony, and High-context Versus Low-context Communication. Each of these cultural patterns is illustrated with sufficient examples of proverbs that mirror these cultural orientations. And the last chapter comes to a conclusion of the whole paper.