Differences In Thought Patterns Between Chinese And Americans And Their Influences On Chinese And English Discourses

When people communicate with each other either through talking or writing, they have a certain kind of expectation that some stereotyped rules of discourse should be followed. However, due to the cultural differences in values and thought patterns etc., it gives rise to the diverse discourse patterns, which stands in the way in the intercultural communication. For the foreign language learners, they often transfer their native discourse rules negatively to the target language discourse, though they have a good command of the grammatical rules of target language. Furthermore, because of lacking of the knowledge of discourse rules of target language, they often fail in the intercultural communication.The study of the differences in discourse patterns has been a significant subject in intercultural communication. It reflects the social culture through language. When dealing with the study of intercultural communication, we can't only confine ourselves to the analysis of linguistic structures such as phonology, lexis and grammar, but also engage ourselves in the study of discourse from a macro level. We can conduct a contrastive analysis from a social,cultural or thinking angle for the purpose of revealing the similarities and dissimilarities between the discourses from different cultural backgrounds which can not only facilitate foreign language teaching, but also explain the reasons behind the pragmatic failure in intercultural communication. This thesis is going to make a contrastive analysis of English and Chinese discourses based on the differences in thought patterns between Chinese and Americans. With the purpose of succeeding in the intercultural communication, this thesis will facilitate target language learning by reducing the negative transfer of mother tongue.As a matter of fact, the differences between English and Chinese discourses reflect the differences in thought patterns. Influenced by diverse factors such as history, geography, climate, philosophy and writing system, different cultures resulted in different thought patterns. In this thesis, a contrastive analysis of thought patterns between Chinese and Americans is carried out. From the analysis, the author finds out that Chinese people prefer circular, synthetic and concrete thinking based on the intuition and experience, while the Americans prefer linear, analytical and abstract thinking. The differences in thought patterns between Chinese and Americans caused the differences in discourses. The Chinese discourses are characterized of cyclical, phenomenon display and climaxing patterns whereas the English discourses are of linear, problem-solving and anti-climaxing patterns.Personally, the author believes that the in-depth exploration of differences in thought patterns and their influences on the English and Chinese discourses will be enlightening and instructive to the language application. Based on the previous viewpoint, the author puts forward some suggestions for the English teaching and learning at the end of this thesis.