中英动物词语的文化内涵对比研究

A Cultural Comparison on English and Chinese Animal Words

摘要

语言是文化的一种载体，人们能够通过它来掌握丰富的社会文化知识。词语是语言的基石，词蕴含着一个民族长期的历史文化、宗教信仰、审美价值观等各项因素。动物词语是词语中经典的一类，从人们的生存与发展的各个阶段，动物都与人类息息相关，人们便用动物或与动物相关的词来描述某一人或物，经过长期的使用让动物词汇拥有了丰富的文化内涵。但是由于各民族的历史文化、宗教信仰、审美价值观等各项因素的不同，有些动物被赋予的寓意不同，具有不同的文化特色及社会历史渊源。然而由于人类发展的历程及背景大致相似，人们对一些动物的认识总体上相同，有些动物词语具有相似或相同的文化内涵。立于文化角度研究动物词汇，能够增强我们对不同文化背景、思维方式及民族特色的理解，可以帮助学者更好的掌握中西不同的文化，促进跨文化交际，促进民族文化的交融及世界全球化进程。

关键词：动物词语；文化差异；对比分析 

ABSTRACT

Language is a vehicle for learning culture, which can help people master social-cultural knowledge. Words are the foundations of a language. Words and phrases can inflect a lot of things such as geography, traditional culture, productive activities, aesthetic values, etc. Animal words is a classical and important kind of a language. In every period, people can’t leave animals, to human beings, on the one hand, animal is food; on the other hand, animal can be work tool. There is no doubt that a lot of animal words are used by people to describe objects or express feelings. Through a long time developed, animal words contains rich cultural connotation. Every nation has its own unique culture, so same animal words may have different cultural connotation in two nations. However, to all human beings, their develop history and background are basically same, so it brings some animal words contains the same cultural connotations. Due to its full bodied ethnic feature, profound historical origin and different thinking modes, learning animal words is an important point for language learning. It can help scholars make full understanding of different nations’ culture, and facilitate the smooth progress of cross-cultural communication, especially in this globalization worlds. 

Key Words：animal words，comparison，cultural connotation