【英文版】A Contrastive Study of Taboos Between China and English.docVIP

1. Introduction Taboo is a sensitive topic, so people usually try to avoid talking about it. In fact, it is an important thing that we cannot ignore. It can be a very important part of the culture. Many experts and scholars have studied the phenomenon from different perspectives. And they also have made effort to research the taboos in different nations and a lot of achievements have been made. In Dictionary of Obscenity Taboo(McDonald, 2001), it is illustrated that the elegance and vulgarity and defined the so-called “words discrimination” in detail. In China, Jin Ze in his book Religion taboos(金泽，2002) analyses the taboos from the perspective of religion. It has studied many races of China in the history and also has a great influence on other foreign nations, which is of great value. Therefore, on the basis of their given achievements, the author will have an exploration of taboos from general cultural perspective. Its aim is to overcome some difficulties between different cultures, to cut down some misunderstandings in communication and to improve communicative competence by studying the formation, classification and application of English taboos in communication from plural angles. Intercultural communication is the exchange between different languages in form. But in essence, it is the intercourse of different cultural systems and cultural forms, aiming at delivering cultural content and message. In the course of giving and receiving information, people should choose proper speech to achieve different communicative outcomes. So knowing the local customs especially the taboos is very important. But owing to the different cultures, people often suffer from some communicative obstacles, and can not catch the real meaning when people talk to them in a euphemistic way in line with their custom instead of direct words. The significance of the current study lies in two aspects. In theory, it makes breakthrough in combining verbal communication with human being