Abstract

This paper points out the misuse of greeting from these aspects—significance, occasion and structure. Firstly, pragmatic significance includes analysis from time, title and body language; Second aspect includes three points, they are “misuse of greeting in some occasions”, “misuse of greeting in festivals”, “misuse of greeting when start a chat”; the last aspect includes use of sentence, different question-answer pattern，all of these aspects will help us to know of differences of greeting between Chinese and British, so that we can avoid misuse and mistakes in interculture communication.

Key words:   greeting, significance, occasion, pattern

摘要

本文通过从问候语的意义，场合和结构来剖析中英问候语的误用。第一方面--实际意义的分析从三方面入手：时间，称谓和肢体语言。第二方面分析包括三点，分别是一些特殊场合上的问候语误用分析，节日问候语误用分析，闲谈时问候语无用分析。最后一方面是句子模式，包括两点：句子的使用和不同的问答模式

关键词：误用，问候语，意义，场合，模式

1. Introduction
Different languages in different cultural and historical backgrounds have different modes of greetings. Greeting is something you say or do when you meet someone. As an important part of social communication, it is widely used in daily life; it also has special functions in communication. If we know nothing about the different greetings in intercultural communication, it is easy to make mistakes which would cause other people unpleasant. So how to use it well is helpful in connecting with others. This article focuses on the different uses of greetings between Chinese and Britain. It gives analysis of the differences from three aspects, which are pragmatic significance, occasions of greeting, structure of greeting, in order to help English learners get some knowledge from it.
2. Demonstration
1. Demonstration   
2.1 Practical significance
2.1.1 Differences in time.
The same greeting may refer to different time in Chinese and British because of the different division of the time. Generally speaking, the same greeting used in different periods or the same period may have different greetings in Chinese and British.