Abstract

The movie Philadelphia describes a story in which the American people believe in rights and actively fight for rights. It has showed that the Americans have strong rights consciousness. Compared to the Americans, the Chinese people tend to play a passive role in pursuing rights and lack clear enough perception about rights. The difference in rights consciousness between the Chinese and Americans has its roots in respective cultures. However, culture involves a great number of definitions and connotations. Many scholars studying cross-cultural communication have observed significantly different characteristics across cultures and summarized those as a series of theories. Thus this paper chooses proper cross-cultural communication theories such as individualism-collectivism and power distance, analyzes their expressions in diverse cultures, and tries to explore what influences they have had on rights consciousness in both countries, in order to find out the cause of the difference in rights consciousness between the American and Chinese legal cultures. In this way, this paper is expected to reach a better understanding of rights consciousness in different cultures.

KEYWORDS:Philadelphia；rights consciousness；cross-cultural communication。

摘　要

电影《费城》体现了美国人民崇尚权利和为权利而斗争的价值追求，反映出了其强烈的权利意识。与此相比，中国人民在追求权利方面态度较为消极，盖因权利意识薄弱。两国人民关于权利意识认识的差异性表现，可从两国截然不同的文化中追溯其可能的原因。但文化的含义太过广泛，而跨文化交际学的研究者们发现了不同文化中所体现出的典型性特征，并将之总结为一系列跨文化交际理论。本文仅从跨文化交际的相关理论出发，通过比较美国文化中表现突出的个体主义与中国文化中着重体现的集体主义，以及权力分配的距离在两种文化中的大小不同，分析引起中美关于权利问题的意识差异的可能的因素。

关键词:费城；权利意识；跨文化交际

1. Introduction
Since one is born, his/her life is closely connected with rights. For example, being a student, he/she enjoys the right to be educated; when his/her legitimate rights were violated, he/she has the rights to compensation. However, it is not every person that possesses a specified and comprehensive rights consciousness. 
1.1 Definition of rights consciousness
First of all, the term of “rights consciousness” should be defined. Rights consciousness points to people’s perception, beliefs and attitudes toward rights and duties. It consists of the contents varying three levels: rights cognition, rights assertion, and rights claim. Respectively, rights cognition is a basic requirement for right subjects to recognize and acknowledge their rights entitled by law; rights assertion right subjects have rights to implement and vindicate those rights based on law; and rights claim is that social members actively appeal newly rightful claim to the government and expand the scope of their rights with the development of society and the need of meeting their own interest demand.