Abstract

Different table manners reflect the cultures, values and ways of thinking of different countries and regions. The tableware, the seating arrangements and the dining atmosphere are very important parts of table manners. This paper contrasts different table manners, some customs and taboos related with them between the Chinese and British so as to help people better understand the great influence of culture and do better in inter-cultural communication

Key words: table manners, values, inter-cultural communication

摘 要

不同的餐桌礼仪折射出不同国家和地区的文化、价值观以及思维方式。在餐桌礼仪中，用餐时所使用的工具，就餐时的座次以及就餐气氛是三个十分重要的部分。本文通过分别对比中英两国餐桌礼仪的差异以及就餐时的一些习俗和禁忌，以便大家更好地了解文化的巨大影响力，从而更好地进行跨文化交际。

关键词：餐桌礼仪；价值观；跨文化交际

1.    Introduction
Etiquette, a witness to thousands of years' human civilization, is a symbol that one nation or nationality gets rid of ignorance and underdevelopment and then turns civilized and advanced gradually. For a society, etiquette reveals the civilization process of the society, morality, habits and customs of a nation. Among the general etiquette, table manners are an essential part. Many specialists and scholars at home and abroad have analyzed the table manners with different theories and from various perspectives in terms of the concept of diet, eating habits, tableware design and reasons why Chinese table manners are different from Western table manners in recent years.
Margaret Visser expressed her points of view by citing examples from the Greeks to Yuppies, from Cannibal customs to Holy Communion, from formal dinner to picnic and from solemnity to ridiculousness in The Rituals of Dinner: The Origin, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners, turning her sharp insight and brilliant talent from the food we eat to the manners in which we eat them. On the other hand, Yu Feng analyzed and compared Chinese people's personalities as sensibility and emphasis on group identification and dignity with western people's independence, rationality, emphasis on personal value and dislike of interference from other perspectives in Chopsticks and Forks: The Cultural Differences Between Chinese and Western in Table Manners. What's more, Li Huiling concluded that we should maintain chopsticks as a feature of traditional Chinese culture by analyzing the origin, symbolization and revelation of chopsticks and the taboos of using chopsticks in The Cultural Meaning and Taboo of Chopsticks.