| Thought pattern is composed of the following eight key elements - knowledge, conception, method, and intelligence, affection, will, language and customs. Language and thought are closely associated with each other. Language, as the main tool of thought, is the key element of thought pattern. Thought embodies itself by certain means, and manifests itself in certain language forms. Different thought pattern is an important factor of linguistic differences. The use of language embodies the selection and creativity of thought.Professor Ji Xianlin once said, "The difference of Chinese and Western culture lies in their different thought patterns, which have different foundation." As far as the difference of Chinese and Western thought patterns is concerned, a lot of scholars agree that Chinese focus more on synthesis, imagination and subjectivity, while Westerners pay more attention to analysis, logic and objectivity. This thesis attempts to compare and analyze six pairs of Chinese and English thought patterns: synthetic thought pattern and analytic thought pattern, imaginative thought pattern and abstract thought pattern, circular thought pattern and linear thought pattern, subjective thought pattern and objective thought pattern, intuitional thought pattern and rational thought pattern, and collectivistic thought pattern and individualistic thought pattern. Besides, there are many factors which lead to these different thought patterns, for instance, geographical location and natural environment, philosophy and language. Furthermore, this thesis analyzes the influences of Chinese and English thought patterns on language expressive forms in terms of sentence structure, alignment of information and discourse patterns.This thesis selects 20 Chinese and English essays respectively as the sample and analyzes them by means of quantitative analysis. At last, the impacts of Chinese and English thought patterns upon language expressive forms are verified through the analysis of some language phenomena existing in Chinese and English essays. |
