The Pragmatic Comparison Of English And Chinese Taboos

The development of social economical globalization has promoted the internationalcommunication and intercultural communication activity has become more and moreoften. People’s interest in the intercultural communication comes from the following twopoints. First, people live in such a time when tourism, economic and political systems,information technology, population immigration and population density all drive them tocommunicate increasingly with other people from different cultures. And whether onelikes it or not, those communications will become more and more frequently. Second,people have already recognized that culture is now influencing communication through adelicate and far-reaching way. People’s cultural perceptions and experiences helpdetermine both what will become of the world and how we interact with each other inthat world. However, the different cultural backgrounds will definitely bring aboutunavoidable misunderstanding and even conflict in intercultural communication, whichmakes it necessary to conduct a comparison between different languages and cultures,thus finding the sources of misunderstanding and conflict for the purpose ofstrengthening mutual understanding among people and ensure that the communicationgoes on successfully.Language, an important tool for human communication, is produced in the processof human labor. Language also bears the character of arbitrary; however, given moreobservation, one can easily find that in actual communication, people do not usually saywhat they want. In certain cultural occasions and circumstance, some words or topics areavoided by people and these avoided words and topics are the so-called taboos. The wordtaboo is originated from the language of Togan which means sanctity or infrangibility.The study shows that taboo is not a phenomenon of Togan area but a culturalphenomenon of every nation.As is known to all, language is used in certain context and it is impossible to make athorough explanation of taboo regardless of social cultural context and communicativecontext, therefore, context theory is the primary theoretical foundation in this paper.Consequently, from the prospective of historical development, taboo changes with thedevelopment of society. Human beings’ material and spiritual civilization graduallyimprove with the development of science, which increase the politeness proportion of taboo increased. However, in intercultural communication, people will abide by differentpoliteness principle to achieve the same communicative goal, thus language and culturaltransfer will be formed. As a result, politeness theories as well as context theoryconstitutes a theoretical foundation for the study of taboo.Linguistic taboo, due to its sensitiveness, has always been a forbidden area oflinguistics and early study of taboo exists mostly in anthology, folklore and psychology.While taboo as a special linguistic phenomenon commonly exist in every culture and isrestricted by social culture. Since there exist great differences of taboo under differentlanguage and cultural background, misunderstanding, conflict or even more seriousconsequences will loom out, if people have no knowledge of different cultures. Therefore,in order to strengthen people’s mutual understanding, mastering Chinese and Englishtaboos is quite necessary.On the basis of the literatures on study of linguistic taboo from within and without,the author of this paper makes a systematic and thorough analysis of Chinese taboo andEnglish taboo from the prospective of culture, politeness theories and context theory forthe purpose of finding the similarities and differences in helping reduce mistakes,misunderstanding and conflict in intercultural communication.This thesis is composed of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. The maincontents are as follows:The first part is introduction. It mainly introduces present study of this research areaand the problems to solve, furthermore, the practical significance and value of the topicthe author discussed.The second part is the body which is made up of three sections:Chapter one mainly introduces the relevant knowledge about taboo, such asdefinition, characteristic, sources and its development. The key point of this chapter isthe theoretical background: context theory and politeness theories.Chapter two, the author makes a pragmatic analysis of Chinese taboo. From theprospective of context theory and politeness theory, on the basis of context theories bylinguists both at home and abroad, the author reveals how situational context elementssuch as time, place, communicative participates, occasions and activities affect the use ofChinese taboos; second, form the prospective of politeness, the writer reveals that how politeness influents the use of Chinese taboos.Chapter three is about the pragmatic analysis of English taboos. From theprospective of context theory and politeness theory, on the basis of context theories bylinguists both at home and abroad, the author reveals how situational context elementssuch as time, place, communicative participates, occasions and activities affect the use ofEnglish taboos; second, form the prospective of politeness, the writer reveals that howpoliteness influents the use of English taboos.Chapter four is about the contrastive study of Chinese and English taboos throughcomparison, the reader can have a clear and through knowledge of the similarities anddifferences between Chinese and English taboos.The last part is conclusion, which is the summarization of the above chapters. It canbe concluded that taboo is not only a linguistic phenomenon but also a socialphenomenon; it commonly exist in every cultures and any improper use of taboo willcause certain misunderstanding, offend or hostility. Thus everyone should cultivate theirintercultural communicative consciousness and improve intercultural communicativecompetence in order to make intercultural communication operate successfully.In fine, the purpose of studying taboos can help reduce people’s misunderstandingand conflict and make communicative activity operated effectively and smoothly.