Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Greetings, as a way to show respect and politeness, play a vital role not only in maintaining friendly relationship between human beings but also in creating the harmonious atmosphere conversation. The present research explores some different linguistic features respectively, and also examines the main factors that cause the differences. It is concluded that a better understanding of cultural differences in greetings will definitely boost the maintenance and improvement of human relations in cross-cultural communications.

Key words: greeting; cultural differences; intercultural communication

摘要：问候，作为一种体现尊重和礼貌的方式，不仅仅在维持人与人之间良好的关系中起着非常重要的作用，而且也创造了和谐的交谈氛围。本文探讨了英汉问候语不同的语言特色，探究了导致这些差异的主要因素，最后得出结论：了解问候语上的文化差异将有助于更好地促进和维护跨文化交流中的人际关系。

关键词：问候语；文化差异；跨文化交际

1. Introduction
Greetings are words used to initiate an everyday communicative interaction or to acknowledge the presence of others. Like many other situational frames such as parting, complementing, apologizing, wedding, etc., greeting is one of the cultural blocks, which varies cross-culturally. With the accelerated development of globalization, chances are that cultural clashes will inevitably arise between people with different cultural backgrounds. A better understanding of cultural differences in greetings will definitely boost the maintenance and improvement of human relations in cross-cultural communications.
The present research, therefore, explores some common properties of greetings in English and Chinese and investigates the differences in their linguistic routines and use. By undertaking a contrastive study of greetings in the two languages, the research aims to compare the nature of such routines in English and Chinese and examine the kinds of factors that affect their use.
2. Definition and Function of Greetings
2.1 Definition of Greetings
Greetings may be defined as an episode of interaction between interactants in the beginning of face-to-face encounters to acknowledge each other’s presence, to initiate and maintain interpersonal relationship, and to observe politeness respectively. Being part of a culture greetings are very often practiced in everyday life, and are cognitively significant in understanding the structure and the essence of a society and culture.