数字在中西方文化中的差异.doc

分类号
密 级
编 号

本科生毕业论文

题 目 数字在中西方文化中的差异
学 院 外国语学院
专 业 英 语
作者姓名 杜 变 变
班 级 2009级二班
学 号 294010604
指导教师 马 金 海
提交日期 2013. 5. 23
xvii

The Cultural Differences of Numerals between China and West
Cultures
Du Bianbian

A thesis
Submitted to the School of Foreign Languages and Literature Tianshui Normal University in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree

of

BACHELOR OF ARTS
in
ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Tianshui, Gansu
May, 2013

原创性声明

本人郑重声明：本人所呈交的论文是在指导教师的指导下独立进行研究所取得的成果。学位论文中凡是引用他人已经发表或未经发表的成果、数据、观点等均已明确注明出处。除文中已经注明引用的内容外，不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的科研成果。
本声明的法律责任由本人承担。

论文作者签名： 年 月 日

论文指导教师签名：

目 录

一、 论文正文………………………………………………1—17
二、 附录
1． 毕业论文成绩评定表
2． 答辩小组意见
3． 答辩成绩评分表
4． 论文指导记录
5． 开题报告

CONTENTS
Abstract i
摘要 ii
I. Introduction 1
II. The Analysis of Numerals Differences between China and
West Cultures………………………………………………………………….2
2.1 The Relationship between Numeral and Religion 2
2.1.1 The Typical Numerals in Western Religion 3
2.1.2 The Typical Numerals in Chinese Religion 4
2.2 The Relationship between Numerals and National Psychology 5
22.1 Numerals and Chinese Psychology 6
2.2.2 Numerals and Western Psychology 8
2.2.3 Typical Taboo Numerals in Chinese and Western 9
2.3 The Relationship between Numerals and Language Aesthetics 10
2.3.1 Numerals and Chinese Aesthetics 10
2.3.2 Numerals and English Aesthetics 12
III. The Cultural Differences of Numerals and Cross-Culture
Communication 14
IV. Conclusion 15
References 17
Acknowledgements iii

The Cultural Differences of Numbers between Chinese and English
Du Bianbian
【Abstract】The human languages convey profound historical cultures and national features. And any language all over the world is rooted in a specific cultural background, reflecting the specific cultural contents. Numerals, being an extremely special language branch, have played crucial roles in the development of human society over thousand of years. Numerals and human life are closely related to each other. The function of numeral in human culture is not only limited in the count of mathematics, but also is a mysterious cultural symbol, which forms a unique numeral culture phenomenon. Numeral plays an important role in human cultural exchanges and development, reflecting the distinctive cultural characteristics. However, there are quite a few differences in religious beliefs, ethical psychology culture, and languages aesthetics in Chinese and westerners, so numerals have been given to the different cultural connotations in different cultural contexts, from the perspective of culture, this paper analyzes these factors to reduce misunderstandings in communication and promote the awareness of cross-cultural communication.

Key Words: Numeral culture; Western culture and Chinese culture; Culture differences; Intercultural communication

数字在中西方文化中的差异
杜变变
【摘要】人类的语言传达深厚的历史文化和民族特色。世界各地的任何语言都是植根于特定的文化背景，反映了特定的文化内容。在数千年内，数字作为一种极其特殊的语言分支，在人类社会发展中发挥了至关重要的作用。数字在人类文化中的作用不仅限于数学中的计数，而且也是一种神秘的文化符号。然而，由于不同民族宗教信仰﹑民族心理文化以及语言美学等诸因素在中西方文化中的差异，致使数字在不同的文化背景下已被赋予了不同的文化内涵。本文从文化的角度来分析这些因素，从而达到减少在跨文化交际中不同民族沟通的误解来促进真正意义上的跨文化交际的目的。

【关键词】数字文化；中西方文化；文化差异跨文化交际

ii

I. Introduction
Language is an important constituent part of culture. The use of language gives an efficient expression to the culture connotation permeation, which makes the spread and expression of culture possible. In many cases, numeral is a kind of cultural symbol, which fully reflects a national multifaceted cultural features. Chinese and English are respectively from different culture systems. As a cultural phenomenon exists in all ethnic groups, it is the “common core” part of the culture, while numerals reference in virtually meaning and expression function are quite different from each other. In the consequence, it gradually formed the cultural differences of understanding between those two languages.
World famous linguist John Taylor (Nida, 2001) discovered the earliest form of culture of the religious belief is “animism” in 1871. He pointed out the origins of the “animism are mythology and religion.” What is the most important is that to some extent numerals spirit can control people’s fate. The westerners are deeply influenced by religious beliefs, they think numeral language is not only the general symbol, but also has magical power operating some certain things. So people often closely involve the numerology in their daily lives. Numeral correspondently connects with people’s concepts and is endowed with positive or negative cultural connotations. These clearly reflect the different national psychology culture. What’s more, British famous linguist Jennifer Seidl (Hu Wenzhong & Du Xuezeng, 1989) thinks that “numeral and language can not be separated, you can not choose to use or not. Where there is number, there will be beauty”.
Chinese scholar Wu Huiying (1990), wrote his excellent monograph about the development of culture and numbers, in which he stated “Numeral—the second generation of Chinese language.” It clearly shows the close relationship in numerals and culture. Also quite a few researchers have been made deeply exploration of numerals in culture, several of which laid the profound fundamental base on the analysis of both the individual properties in Chinese and English. China Culture Linguistics, written by linguist Shen Xiaolong (1989), can be a good example of such researches, in which the Chinese culture and linguistics were studied. Numerals Heaven and Earth, written by scholar Zhang Dexing (1999) the typical examples of this field, in which he made a point that “ the numeral differences are deeply involved with national psychology and tradition concepts for a long time.” In recent decades, many excellent essays concerning on the numeral differences between Chinese and westerners have been published. Cultural scientists and linguists are gradually aware of western culture factors that bring about numeral language very different with Chinese culture.
From the three cultural dimensions that on the profound prior study from experts and scholars, this paper focus on the different aspects of religion, national psychology, language aesthetics to mainly analyze Chinese and western culture differences. By comprehensively researching numerals in different cultural backgrounds, people coming from different cultures can get useful information and helps to respectively respect their own customs and culture to reduce misunderstandings in communication and to achieve the awareness of cross-cultural communication in the information era of economic globalization.

Ⅱ.The Analysis of Numerals Differences between China and West
Cultures
2.1 The Relationship between Numeral and Religion
There is a “blood relationship” between religion and myth. From the point of cultural history, religion is often a core of cultural factor. Many civilized countries in their civilization history have appeared the dominant situation of the theological and religious culture, even appearing continuation in one thousand rather than liberation, but dominated by Confucianism in two thousand years, China had never been the dominant situation of theological and religious culture. Although there are various kinds of religious classics in China, it is not easy to find a book like the Bible that is all-round scientific saint and almost as the moon and the sun in west countries. The ancient Greek civilization and Hebrew civilization marked by the Bible together constitute the basic source of modern western culture and thoroughly clueless in the entire western ideology and culture filed, which has fully reflected in the numeral superstition (Guang Zhenbin, 2007). This article will choose some typical numerals both in two languages to illustrate the point.
2.1.1 The Typical Numerals in Western Religion
In the west, numeral “thirteen” is the NO. One big fear for the Anglo—American. The reasons come from the ominous legends and stories in the Bible: Jesus and his disciples all together are thirteen people in the last supper, due to one of them became a traitor and betrayed the Jesus, unfortunately Jesus was crucified on the cross and the very day was Friday. And the day that Cain killed his close brother was also on Friday. In the consequence from the various ominous religion legends, Friday become an unlucky day and even sometime called it “black Friday” (Zhou Yuan, 2008). In addition, there was a kind of loop with thirteen rings in the middle ages of western and also the hank has thirteen steps, the executioner’ s salary are thirteen coins. This is the reason why the thirteen happen to be the same day with Friday would be ominous and fierce in the west custom. Virus on the network often broke out in the day. As opposed to the numeral thirteen, western people prefer the numeral three, seven, nine, ten etc. Numeral three is so cult because it symbolizes the god of Trinity that means union of three persons in Christianity—Father, Son, Holy spirit in one God. There are three virtues in Christianity: loyalty, hope, and love for others. Numeral seven has the close relationship with seven kinds of deadly sins in religion: Pride, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Avarice, and Sloth, all of which warn people that only through this purgatory can people get into the heaven. As people all well known in the western culture, Christian believes God created everything in the world in seven days, so a week expressed in seven days has become the world’s universal timing method. Meanwhile, Jesus told people forgive others as many as seven times; the virgin Mary had seven happy things, seven sad things; the holy spirit has seven gift; person’s life is divided into seven growth period; the prayer of lords is divided into seven parts. All of above specific examples mentioned have close relationship with religion and Christian legends. What’s more, since the seven archbishops in Greek, so western religion and culture often use the numeral “seven” to regulate people’s moral behaviors and religion ceremonies. Here are seven virtues: Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice, Fortitude, Prudence, and Temperance. Maybe many people hear about the seven Spiritual Works of Mercy and the seven Sacraments. Actually there surely exist the seven Spiritual Works of Mercy and the seven Sacraments in western religion: to convert the sinners, to instruct the ignorant, to counsel those in doubt, to comfort those in sorrow, to bear wrong patiently, to forgive the injurers, to pray for the living and dead, and the seven Sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Orders, Matrimony and Extreme Unction(Ye Shuxian, 1990). Numeral nine is the ultimate ideal of Christianity, which is supposed to represent the human being to do good things in this good Karma and symbolizes the best treatment for human being sins after God. People will be in the heaven only by do the “ten commandments”. At the same time, the numeral “ten” is also a symbol of the “cross”, on which Jesus was crucified.
2.1.2 The Typical Numerals in Chinese Religion
In the five thousand years development process of cultural history in China, the influence of religions belief is very outstanding; especially the three major religions even have their own irreplaceable roles respectively in China. But here among them, Chinese is rather familiar with Buddhism than other religions. The ominous hazards of numbers also has great deal of examples to embody religious influence in Chinese culture, such as the number “one hundred and eight” has a close relationship with Buddhism. “One hundred and eight” can be used as a symbol of the Buddha in Buddhism throughout the daily life and the important things of Buddhism: Buddhist Budhidharma on behalf of a total of Buddha namely “one hundred and eight Buddha” in the show of faith to Buddha. The Chinese nation considers that the “ten” is full, meaning “completeness”, “success” or “perfection”, which in Chinese “ 十全十美、完美、圆满 ”. Therefore, people use the numeral ten as a standard to describe the fullest extent of things, meanwhile fully show cultural meanings of numerals. Such as “ 十大圣人 ” (the ancient 10th St.), “ 十大兵书 ” ( the military books ten Bingshu), also there is “Kilometer Street” in Beijing in Chinese “ 十里长街 ” and “ten dream, changed their lives and put their survival under threat. Under such circumstances, human conditions changed drastically. The original integral self is presented as fragmented and insecure. In general, Americans believe in tradition values and emphasize the importance of pressure on family life. “Qinhuai ” in Nanking in Chinese “ 十里秦淮 ” , “ 十里洋场 ” that is “ten foreign markets” in Shanghai as so on. It can be seen that Chinese people love number “ten”. In addition, most Chinese love the auspicious numerals and are familiar with their relative things in ordinary life. Hence, there are some idioms related with numerals as well as Buddha temples, the monks etc., for example, in Chinese “一个和尚挑水吃, 两个和尚抬水吃, 三个和尚没水吃” that is “one boy is a boy, two boys half a boy, three boys no boys.” in English, and “做一天和尚撞一天钟” that is “a day monk bump a day clock.” in English(Zeng Yufang , 2008).
In a nutshell, both western culture and Chinese culture have been profound influence by their own religions, so does the numeral languages. Also, Chinese culture has been profound influence of Confucianism and Buddhism, Taoism and pay more attention to the harmony of nature, the pursuit of spiritual satisfaction and detached, especially the well-known theory “ 天人合一 ” that is “man is an integral part of nature” is the core idea for Chinese people, while westerners have strong belief for their sacred religions.
2.2 The Relationship between Numerals and National Psychology
In the ancient time, people think that language is not merely a common symbol that could bless for them but also have evil magical power, so people would not literally talk about the affairs of those banned phenomenon relating with numerals, otherwise they will suffer catastrophe sooner or later. As an important form of expression of language, numerals have their own souls that to some extent can control the fate of people. Thus, people always tend to use and talk about those lucky numerals to avoid those numeral considered are ominous as much as possible in daily life. So numerals have close relationship with reflecting the culture and people’s psychology of each nation.
2.2.1 Numerals and Chinese Psychology
It is acknowledged that Chinese al