Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Taboo is a complicated culture phenomenon, which exists in all human societies.  Linguistic taboos are those to be avoided entirely, which includes some certain words, activities or some relations. As society advances, the contact between cultures is becoming more frequent and it is increasingly common to focus on training communicative ability in cross-cultural activities so that people from different cultural backgrounds can understand each other well and avoid conflicts with each others. No matter what kinds of cultural contexts in a cross-cultural communication, taboo is exceptionally regarded as one of the most active factors to determine whether the communicative activity ends up in success or failure. This paper tries to explore the differences between English and Chinese taboos. Its aim is to facilitate the communicative activities done by different participants from different cultural backgrounds.

Key words: taboo; cultural difference; cross-cultural communication

摘要：禁忌语是人类社会普遍存在的一种复杂的文化现象，禁忌是指社会力图避讳的某些行为、事物或关系。随着社会的进步，各种文化间的接触日趋频繁，人们越来越开始注重培养在跨文化交际中的交际能力，以便增加不同文化背景的人们之间的相互理解，从而达到和平共处、避免冲突。然而无论跨文化交际发生在什么样的文化环境中，禁忌语处理得适当与否，都是决定交际是否成功的关键因素之一。本文将着重中英禁忌语对比研究，旨在增加对禁忌语的相关知识来减少乃至消除跨文化交际活动中的障碍，从而减少误解，确保交际活动的顺利进行。

关键词：禁忌语; 文化差异; 跨文化交际

1.Introduction 
In language communication, certain words are forbidden or avoided to use by people because of some reasons. Those words are considered holy, dangerous, unpleasant or offensive. They are only allowed to be used by certain people in certain situations. This kind of phenomena is linguistic taboo, and the words are taboo words or simply words.
We often say language is the carrier of culture, taboo reflects the cultural background and implication. While the world get smaller and smaller, it is urgent for us to understand foreign cultural backgrounds and get along with people who come from different culture background. When we communicate with others, what the certain words mean is just what they mean in that context. An utterance becomes intelligible only when it is placed within its context of situation. Linguistic taboos should be studied within linguistic, situational, social and cultural contexts.
 As people learn to communicate through the influence of culture, the link between culture and communication is crucial. It is necessary for us to understand the communication context fully and how it varies culturally. When we learn a foreign language, we should not only notice differences between the foreign language and our mother tongue but the differences between foreign culture and our own culture. The cultural differences decide linguistic differences. Taboo also differs from each other while there are some similarities.