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1、On Lexical Differences in Chinese and English Caused by Culture Abstract: The paper first introduces to readers what culture really is, and then focuses on the lexical differences in Chinese and English lexical vacancy and lexical association. Through a detailed analysis, it is concluded that lexica
2、l differences between Chinese and English result from cultural diversities, with which particular languages are associated. Obviously, culture plays a significant role in determining the uniqueness of a lexical system. Therefore, the lexical differences caused by culture should be taken into account
3、 in any cross-cultural exchange.Key words: culture lexical vacancy lexical associationTo master the vocabulary of a language, one has to learn the culture it reflects, that is, in the course of lexical learning; he needs to be exposed widely to the culture concerned and by which to develop an awaren
4、ess and understanding of his own culture and the target culture.I. Definitions of CultureEvery human society has a culture. People who grow up in the same nation can be said to share a national culture. Then, what is culture? Probably the most classic definition of culture was provided by the 19th-c
5、entury English anthropologist Edward Burnett Taylor in the first paragraph of his Primitive Culture (1871):“Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”This concept of culture
6、served anthropologists well for some 50 years. With the increasing maturity of anthropological science, further reflections upon the nature of their subject matter and concepts led to a multiplication and diversification of definitions of culture. In Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Defini
7、tions (1952), U.S. anthropologists A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn cited 164 definitions of culture, ranging from “learned behavior” to “ideas in the mind”, “a logical construct”, “a statistical fiction”, “a psychic defense mechanism” and so on. The definition or the conception of culture that is p
8、referred by Kroeber and Kluckhohn and also by a great many other anthropologists is that culture is an abstraction or, more specifically, “an abstraction from behavior”.Although one can find a variety of definitions, many have agreed on three basic traits that are common to all. These traits are: cu
9、lture is shared; cultural components are interrelated and culture is learned. It shall be assumed that culture is the total way of life of a nation, their approaches to life and their ways of behaving, particularly living and thinking. A society, in fact, is an extremely complicated cultural system
10、and various cultures are the bases on which different human societies survive and progress. As a result of the great diversities of cultures, it is no doubt that in different languages, there are considerable lexical differences, which include mainly lexical vacancy and lexical association.II. Lexic
11、al VacancyIt is curious to note that in translating from one language into another, expressions in the source language do not always find their counterparts in the target language and what is marked by a single word in the source language has to be expressed with a lot of explanations in a rather co
12、mplex way in the target language. This, then, is called lexical vacancy, which may exist in any lexical field and be caused by the fact that different cultures will make good use of the limited vocabulary to indicate the limitless objective and subjective worlds, based on their particular needs and
13、interests. At the same time, cultural emphases will directly affect the total number of a vocabulary, its unusualness to and differences from other vocabularies. For instance, in Chinese, we have 堂兄，堂姐，堂弟，堂妹，表哥，表姐，表弟，表妹and we have 姑父，姨夫，舅舅，叔叔，伯伯with clear and strict distinction, while in English the
14、re are only two words used to refer to them respectively, that is, cousin and uncle. This is because in a traditional Chinese family, the core is father and son and people are extremely concerned with kinship. Regardless of a wedding or a funeral or a legacy heritage, it will be handled in light of
15、the rating among relatives. While in the West, America and Britain in particular, the core in a family is conjugality and people pay little attention to other kinships. No wonder those foreign translators are mad about how to translate properly the intricate appellations in Dream of the Red Chamber
16、and our Chinese translators are also at a loss on how to deal with this kind of lexical vacancy. Another good case in point is the literary character阿庆嫂，Sister Aqing in someones translation, but as we know, 嫂 is used to refer to a married lady whereas in English-speaking countries, Sister as a title
17、, is put before the last name of a nun. The difference is really too much! Besides, in Chinese we use 您 as the honorific title of 你, but in modern English, there is no such a polite form of you. Similarly, appellations in Chinese such as 老师 (e.g. 张老师)，师傅 (e.g. 刘师傅), 二哥cant find their counterparts in
18、 English. It is said that in ancient China, an emperor can have 3,000 beauties as his wives and concubines and as a result of it, there are a lot of titles such as 皇贵妃，妃，嫔，贵人 used to show their different ranks and standings. This is typical of the feudal system in China and such lexical vacancies ar
19、e unavoidable in English. The same are those characters in Chinese myths such as 盘古，嫦娥，女娲，牛郎，织女 and 土地神，unique to Chinese culture. In education, our universities and colleges are divided into 本科 and 专科，and the latter is translated into college for professional training or training school, but the tr
20、anslations cant help English readers to get the idea that it is a two-year or three-year school, lower than a university or college in rank. They havent got such schools and of course cant understand it. One more example is that in America, there are three sorts of professors: assistant professor, a
21、ssociate professor and professor; in China, however, there are only associate professor and professor and we dont know exactly what assistant professor is. III. Lexical AssociationAs a matter of fact, lexical vacancy covers only a rather small part in the ocean of culture and it is those countless p
22、henomena of lexical associations that reflect cultural differences more. It is true that there are lexical counterparts between different languages, but “counterpart” is not equal to “sameness”. Even if the same word carries the same denotative meaning in two languages, under the influence of differ
23、ent cultures, it may considerably vary in lexical associations, including emotional meaning, social meaning and affective meaning. For instance, gay in English originally means “cheerful, merry, happy”, but in America, a society facing a serious AIDS problem, the word will easily arouse peoples asso
24、ciation with “homosexual”. And this sort of connection will in no way happen to a Chinese who knows little about the American culture. Imagining if one understands “summers day” of Shakespeares Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day as a hot day, he is making a big mistake! As we know, the geographic
25、al environments are very unlike what we Chinese have got and a summers day in Britain is actually one cozy spring day. Therefore, the lexical associations it carries is good enough to an Englishman, whereas it will no doubt remind the Chinese of great sufferings. Zhu Guangqian, a noted Chinese schol
26、ar once pointed out pithily that words like shepherd, sea, castle, nightingale carry rich lexical associations to the British and the same are words like 风，月，江，潮，梅，松，隐逸，礼，阴阳 in Chinese.Surprisingly enough, the lexical associations in animals are striking. Dragon, for example, is often regarded as an
27、 extremely cruel and pitiless monster in the western world and conversely, the Chinese believe firmly 龙 to be the symbol of might, power, luck, happiness, authority and even national dignity, thus having such expressions as 龙颜大怒，龙腾虎跃，龙飞凤舞，龙凤呈祥 and 龙马精神. In western cultures, dogs are often considered
28、 a cute creature and human beings friendly companion. So, the word dog is mainly used with a commendatory sense, as in help a lame dog over a stile, love me, love my dog, a lucky dog and work like a dog. On the contrary, the Chinese treat a dog as an obnoxious animal and the word is often used with
29、a derogatory sense, as in 狗仗人势，狼心狗肺，狗急跳墙 and 狗头军师. In the Chinese peoples eyes, 山羊is an honest animal while a goat in English can be a love-lace or a lecher. Tigress simply refers to a female tiger and has no lexical associations in English whereas 母老虎 in Chinese always indicates a pungent female. N
30、o wonder whenever our Chinese students read the word and cant help laughing, while their foreign teachers are always at a loss. “You are a fox.” does not mean bad things, for a hipster is often called a fox in English, but in Chinese 狐狸 is always equal to a sly and mean person. Similarly, a Chinese
31、will never connect a cat with a heinous woman as a westerner does for we love a cat more than the westerners hate it.Like animals, the lexical associations of colors are closely related to cultural backgrounds. In China, once a person becomes an upstart or a superstar, those around him will become e
32、nvious with red eyes, but the English-speaking people will be green-eyed instead of red-eyed. Blue is very liked by the Chinese and the blue sky or the blue sea will always arouse their longing and speculation. So, they take it for granted that the popular music named Love is Blue simply means love
33、is worthy of dreaming, but in fact it means love is sad and gloomy. Besides 黄色 in Chinese symbolizes indelicacy and degeneracy, especially indicating pornography, but in English yellow carries no such a lexical association. 黄色电影 in Chinese becomes a blue film in English.In all, different nations hav
34、e established their own system of culture in different social environments, endowing different lexical associations to words with the same denotative meanings. Hence, the understanding and interpretation of such culturally loaded words must go along with the knowledge of the culture involved. IV. Co
35、nclusionTo sum up, lexical differences between languages result from cultural diversities, with which particular languages are associated. It is clear that culture plays an important role in determining the uniqueness of a lexical system. Therefore, the lexical differences caused by culture should be taken into account in any cross-cultural exchange.References:1范仲英. 实用翻译教程. 外语教学与研究出版社. 1996.2顾嘉祖、陆晟. 语言与文化. 上海外语教育出版社. 1987.3杨自俭、刘学云. 翻译新论. 湖北教育出版社. 1996.4Gillian Brown. Language and Understanding. 上海外语教育出版社. 2000.
