An Intercultural Study Of Mottoes In Famous Universities In Chinese And U.S.

The university motto reflects campus cultural background and tradition. It embodies akind of virtue and spirit just as the soul of university. It also shows a university’seducational philosophy and value orientation. The function of university motto is topromote all the teachers and students to deeply understand this kind of spirit and blend thisspirit in their work and study and support them to do better in their lives. So the final aimof a university motto is to put it into daily life, and the premise of practice is tocomprehend the true essence of the university motto. Through the research of theuniversity motto, people can know the core and soul of a university’s culture. The authorfirstly analyzes the university motto’s characteristics in this paper so that people can knowmore about the university motto. Then the author chooses fifteen Chinese and twelveAmerican famous universities from the rankings of four authoritative world universityrankings such as USNEWS, QS, THE and ARWU and analyze these mottoes’ similaritiesand differences. The author finds similarities between American and Chinese universitiesmottoes from mottoes’ content, function, presentation and source of ideas. In the aspect ofdifferences, the author analyzes from mottoes’ form and content. There are three parts inthe mottoes’ form. They are literal features, nature of mottoes and mottoes’ stability. In theaspect of mottoes’ content, the author analyzes whether these mottoes can reflectHofstede’s cultural value dimensions or not. The result shows that mottoes reflect powerdistance, uncertainty avoidance and individualism vs. Collectivism, and do not reflectmasculinity and femininity dimension. Mottoes are not totally fit for long-term and short-term orientation. It shows that the university motto reflects parts of culture and thecontent which motto reflects can basically accord with Hofstede’s cultural valueorientation. Through these analyses, the author gets the shortages of some Chineseuniversities and hopes Chinese mottoes to be more stable. The author also hopes that moreand more people will pay much attention to the university motto, and promote theintercultural communication.