In The West "obligations" Of Cross-cultural Comparison

Focusing on the analysis of the cultural key word "duty", and following the principles of from word to semantics and then to the culture, the research paper made a comparative analysis on the difference between the eastern and western duty viewpoint based on the theory of the intercultural communication, contrastive linguistics and the cultural semantics. Through tracing back the process of varied meaning development and the culture history of duty, the essay elaborate on the original meaning, the connotation and the cultural features it conveys, through which we could dig out the same and difference of national spirits such as moral duty and legal duty in both Chinese and English context. Meanwhile, duty also reflect the differences between different nations in way of cognition and communication, and duty is also the reflection of national differences in social cultural system, life style and customs, values, and basic morals.To conclude, we believe that language is the material shell of culture, as well as the tool of reflecting the national features of different language users. Each cultural key word in language is a long cultural history, which is worth researching and discussing deeply and continuously.