摘要：

曾轰动一时的周洋“感谢门”事件引发了公众对国家和人民关系问题的热烈探讨,这种关系在Hofstede权力距离理论中体现得犹为明显。作为跨文化交际的一个重要方面，中西方的权力距离存在着相当大的差别。Hofstede认为中国属于高权力距离文化，西方则属于低权力距离文化。这样的差异不仅体现在中西方致谢词中，还体现在英汉人名顺序、书信地址的表达上。这种差异是由多方面因素造成的，主要是由于中西方在历史渊源、宗教信仰、价值观上存在着不同。我们了解中西方在权力距离上的差异，以及形成此差异的原因，对以后的中西方跨文化交际将会十分有益。

关键词：权力距离；文化差异；实例分析
 
Abstract：

The sensational Zhou Yang’s “Thanking Gate” once provoked numerous controversies over the relationship between nation and its people. The relationship has been fully demonstrated in Hofstede’s power distance theory. As a significant part of cross-cultural communication, power distance differs between China and the West greatly. Hofstede argues that China is high power distance culture and the West is low power distance culture. It is illustrated not only in Chinese and western thanking words, but also in name order and expression of letter address. The huge gap is due to various reasons, such as history, religion, values, etc. Our full awareness of the differences in power distance between China and the West and the reasons can greatly benefit the cross-cultural communication in the future.

Key words: power distance；culture differences；case analysis

1. Introduction
As the rapid development of our society and trend of globalization, cross-cultural communication becomes more and more important. To better understand the culture differences between China and the West can have a positive effect on enhancing cultural exchanges, diminishing international conflicts and transferring splendid traditional culture. Power distance, as a significant part of cross-cultural communication, has been increasingly paid attention to and widely applied into not only cross-cultural communication but also pedagogy, business management, government leadership and so on. Power distance, a cultural characteristic, has been studied by many scholars, such as Mauk Mulder, Veen, Rodenburg, Tielens, Hofstede and the like. Mauk Mulder, in his paper “the Daily Power Game”, first hypothesized that all people on the bottom seek to reduce power distance while those on the top seek to maintain or increase it. Among all these famous researchers, the most rewarding and impressive one is Geert Hofstede, representative of Holland Institute of Cross-Culture Research, who has discussed the influence of the five cultural dimensions, that is, individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and long-term orientation, to analyze different values of each country.