A Contrastive Study of English and Chinese Taboos in Cross―cultural Communication.doc

A Contrastive Study of English and Chinese Taboos in Cross―cultural Communication 　　1 Introduction With more and more intercommunication today， English is regarded as the worlds most widely used language. Nowadays， many people can speak fluent English for daily communications， but the misunderstanding of some cultural taboos often leads to embarrassment. Therefore， people find that learning and mastering linguistic taboos of different cultures are the important method to break the bottleneck of communication. As a result， this paper contrastively analyzes the similarities and differences of Chinese and English taboos in cross-cultural communication， in order to stress the importance of？understanding and mastering taboos and have a smooth communication with others. 2 Literature Review The taboo is a quite important factor that effects peoples daily communication. With the the study going further， more and more scholars have made plenty of researches on taboos， so that people can avoid embarrassment and communicate quite smoothly. 2.1 Overseas Researches of Taboos In early time， taboo researches were relevant to anthropology， ethnography of communication， sociology and psychology. In 1890， Sir James G Frazer was an influential figure in this field， publishing a book The Golden Bough， which was a milestone in the research of taboo. Sigmund Freud in 1913 published his book Totem and Taboo， which provided the most ingenious explanation for the irrational nature of taboo. In 1967， Margaret Mead and Franz Baermann Steiner published Taboo， Truth and Religion. Whats more， this important work offered more perspectives for the study of taboos. Different books have different focuses， but these works can be very helpful for the later researchers of linguistic taboos. Until now， the linguistic taboo is also a significant part of language learning， so researchers will continue to do researches on this topic. 2.2 Domestic Researches of Taboos China with a lo