The Differences Between Chinese And Western Social Etiquettes And Cross-cultural Adaptation

Today, the development of economy is at an astonishing rate. The development of the society makes the world much smaller than before. With such a circumstance, many Chinese people would like to go to foreign countries to pursue advanced education. The world pays much more attention to the huge group---international students. At present, many researches about the international students who study in China are carried on no matter in China or other countries. However, overseas Chinese students are also a group to be paid more attention to. They will face all kinds of problems in other countries especially in the aspect of adapting to a new culture and a new environment. In order to investigate something about overseas Chinese students, this thesis carries on a detail study on the cross-cultural adaptation of them from the perspective of the social etiquettes.Based on the Culture Relativism, Culture Shock, Cross-culture Adaptation Theory, U-Curve Model as well as social etiquettes, this thesis proposes three important research questions. First, what are the differences between Chinese and western social etiquettes and what are the reasons for the differences; second, what strategies did Chinese returnees take in terms of cross-cultural adaptation; third, what are the implications for combining cross-cultural education with Chinese English teaching.In order to settle all of these questions, the author of this thesis adopts the literature method and the interview method. This thesis studies 30 overseas international students who are in China now. The countries they come back are America, UK, Australia and Canada. After writing down their words and analyzing the original data, the author finds out answers to these three questions. First of all, there are lots of differences between China and western countries in patterns of greeting, courtesy, addressing system, visiting, inviting, compliment and apologize, gifts giving and receiving. Reasons of these differences exist in cultural background, national identity, and natural environment, modes of communication, social status and values. Secondly, when they adapt to a fresh culture, international students participate in some activities which the university organized; then when they encounter some problems, they could go to the special department for some help; the most important one is that they have a spirit of receiving the reality and keeping adjusting themselves. For the sake of improving the cross-cultural adaptability of Chinese returnees, people should strengthen their language training and create ways to know about the local culture. They can also provide counseling services for international students. For ESL, the first thing is to enhance the education of social etiquettes. Secondly, people should overcome stereotypes and national centralism. Finally, the students should be guided to attach great importance to the culture behind the language.