A Comparative Study of the Different Cultural Values between Chinese and British Residences from the Perspective of Cultural Semantics 英语毕业论文.doc

A Comparative Study of the Different Cultural Values between Chinese and British Residences:from the Perspective of Cultural Semantics A Bachelors ThesisPresented toThe School of Foreign LanguagesJinling Institute of TechnologyIn Partial FulfillmentOf the Requirements for theBachelor of Arts DegreebyWang KaiMay 5, 2011金陵科技学院学士学位论文 AbstractContentsAbstracti摘 要ii1.Introduction12.Theoretical Foundation: Culture and Cultural Semantics22.1 Comparative Study of Cultures22.2 Cultural Semantics33. Architecture and Culture53.1 Architecture as the Culture Product53.2 Residence64. Residences and the Features74.1 Chinese Residences74.2 British Residences94.3 Comparison of the Main Features95. Cause and the Embodiment115.1 The Cause of the Distinctions115.2 The Embodiment of the Culture125.2.1 Self-reliance and Dependence125.2.2 Privacy and Social Concern136. Conclusion16Bibliography17Acknowledgements19金陵科技学院学士学位论文 2.Theoretical Foundation: Culture and Cultural Semantics1. IntroductionCulture is the intellectual and spiritual achievements of human beings. It can be divided into two parts: culture-product and culture-pattern. Culture-product is about the outcomes created by the basic structure and functions of a culture. It concerns the different exterior characteristics of culture systems. However, the culture-pattern is the basic dominating part abstracted from the cultural products of various types, namely, it deals with the interior model of the culture. The culture-pattern is the abstract concept of the cultural products of a culture type, while the cultural products are the specific accounts of the culture pattern. (Liu, 2002:1) Thus, comparative study between cultures is just to reveal the culture pattern through the comparison of the cultural products such as traditional clothes, architectures, religions and so on.Architecture is one type of the cultural product created by people of certain culture pattern. There have been lots of books and papers studying on the comparison between Chinese and western cultures through architectural features from a variety of aspects such as concepts of nature, states of independence, aesthetic standards, and ways of naming the architectures and so on. And there are also comparative studies on architectures built in Chinese and British landscape gardens. However, this paper deals with different cultural values in the residences of Chinese and British from the view of cultural semantics. It is mainly divided into three parts. The first part concerns the theories of my paper. The second part is about the architecture as the cultural product reflects the culture and conventions of the people whos living in. Then a brief account on the main features of the Chinese and British residences is given in the third part. And the next part is about the reason of the distinctions and different conventions resulted in the two styles of residences shaped by the values of individualism and collectivism. 2. Theoretical Foundation: Culture and Cultural Semantics2.1 Comparative Study of CulturesThere have been over four hundred definitions made for culture according to the Course of Culturology. Here are two typical ones in the field.They take that of the British anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor as the first definition of culture. He said: “Culture . is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” And A.L.Kroeber defined it as “Culture is made up of exterior and interior behavior patterns. These behavior patterns are obtained and transferred through symbolic signals. The culture represents the remarkable achievements of the group of human, including the embodiment in man-made things; the core part of culture is the traditional idea (namely idea obtained and selected in the history) and especially the value it brought in. On the one hand the culture system can be regarded as the product of social activity; on the other hand it is the determining factor of the movements in the future.” (Wu, 2002:50)Tylors definition has the most far-reaching influence in the field of culturology since the beginning of the subject. And Kroebers is now widely accepted and is considered to be the most complete one.Because of the complication of the culture and its hard to give a complete definition, many scholars are inclined to reduce it into concise parts. For example, someone has divided it into four parts as culture-product, culture-capability, culture-spirit and culture-act-pattern. In order to be pithier, Liu made it into two parts, culture-product and culture-pattern. And the culture-pattern includes the patterns of behavior, thought and value. (Liu,2002:1) And I prefer this type of conception of culture because it sums up the culture in both broad and narrow senses.Culture-product is the culture in broad sense. It includes all the achievements human beings made in the society such as architectures, clothes, laws, literatures, social ideology and so on. Such culture-product is the specific display of the culture-pattern. For example, the features of Chinese quadrangle courtyard show vividly the value pattern of collectivism of the country; while British type of detached houses disclose the individualism of the culture.Culture-pattern, which is the domination of its culture-product, is the narrow sense of culture. The pattern is embodied in all its products and is the abstract image of the achievements. This sense of culture concerns the characteristics and status of the interior structure to make out the internal cause of the external appearances of the cultural products. For instance, because of Chinese value of collectivism, the people would like to live together and the houses are connected together to form a courtyard. And as a result of the individualism, the British prefer the detached houses separated far from each other.Culture can be divided into two parts, culture-product and culture-pattern. Then which sense is the comparison studying on? Generally speaking, such study concerns the culture pattern through comparing the features of the cultural products. For example, this paper deals with the features of Chinese and British architectures to study the cultures. Then, to find out the distinctions of the architectures is on the level of studying the culture-product. However, in order to compare the different cultures, it should be researched on the culture pattern which conducted the distinctions, that is, different values of individualism and collectivism. 2.2 Cultural Semantics Culture is a ethnical phenomenon of the life in human society, and different nations and countries have different cultures. That is, culture is differentiated with national marks. The national character of culture decides that the language depends on culture as the background, namely, language will not exist without its culture; it is the culture that people depending on to comprehend and use a language. As a branch of the cultural linguistics, cultural semantics concerns the ethnocultural semantic character of the words, and the irrational analysis method in form restricted by the national culture; it is research on the influence process that cultural factors affect the semantic part from the aspect of semiotics and semantics; it is the comparison on two languages to reveal the categories of culture-functional semantics and ethnocultural semantics(e.g. culture-synonymy and culture-antonym) and so on.(Wu,2000:17) Language is the product of the culture in the civil society. It shows peoples attitudes towards the world and their standards for activities. Language is a remarkable achievement of the civil human society and the sign of distinguished from the animals. Language depends on culture and is the reflection of culture. Words come out of the life style, living conventions, surroundings, social conditions of a nation. And this conducts the national characteristic of the word and the language.Architecture is the cultural product that most closely related with peoples living activities and also affects the national language and the semantics. 金陵科技学院学士学位论文 3.Architeture and Culture 3. Architecture and Culture Architecture is of the cultural product created in the human society. Its shapes, functions and appearances are all catering for the certain culture pattern of the society. And residence takes the lead position in all kinds of buildings. 3.1 Architecture as the Culture Product Architectures appear as a result of residence, one of the basic material needs of human beings for sheltering from wind and rain. Thus, architectures are considered to be one of the most important material needs for human living. “Material needs for living are the basic needs of great importance for man kinds existence, and they are the base on which people carry out their activities. Judging from the quality of the materials, they are natural. While they are made use of in the society of human civilization, the materials are shaped as a result of catering for peoples tastes of different cultures. Thus, the substances from the natural world had been affected by various cultures and became containers full of cultural information. ” (Liu, 2002:104) Said Liu in his book and he took the building as one of the examples for his comparative study between Chinese and western cultures. Descriptions on how architectures received the cultural meanings were made that: “Houses in the ancient times were very simple without any decoration. With the development of the social technology, people began to add their designing thoughts and decorative things to the simple houses they built as their abilities of building and modeling were strengthened. As time went by, the houses gradually got on cultural information and became the embodiment of different cultures.” (Liu, 2002:117) Resulted in the variation of peoples intention and activities, various kinds of architectures with different functions came into being, such as palaces, churches, temples, gardens and so on. And it is said that: “The ability of building a house demands for a comprehensive capability from a variety of aspects of fields. Architectures can most directly disclose the different cultures and peoples living styles in various areas and historical periods.” (Fan, 2003:25)From this, it is obvious that architecture is the most important one among the cultural products. And it is the culture pattern that leads to the different features. 3.2 Residence House built for living in is the kind of architectures for the basic practical use in the daily life. And it takes a leading position among all the buildings. There is a saying of behavioral scientists that: “The clothes are the expansion of ones skin, while the residence is the limbs.” Such a saying explains to the full that what one thinking in his mind would certainly affect his environmental conditions. (Meng, 2004:2) “Residence is one of the basic living materials of mankind. It is the place where people carry out most of their activities, such as having meals, sleeps, holding marriage, sacrifices and so on. The appearance of the so called houses is the mark of the human civilizations.”(Tang, 2004:5) Wang Wei also said in his book that: “House is certainly a kind of receptacle of concepts besides its basic practical functions for residing, and it keeps a relation to the creation of beauty.”(Wang, 2004:137) From all the words above, the residence maintains most close relationship with peoples life and it is the house people spend most thoughts on. Hence, a conclusion can be reached that architecture is able to mirror the culture of the society and the residence, to some extent, reflects the character and concepts of the residents characters towards the society and the world. Therefore, we can say that the residence is the expansion not only of ones limbs but also of the ideas and concepts. Residence is the form of architecture that can be to some extent a representative of the character and the thoughts of the resident. Then, the main features of residences in a country may surely be the reflection of the traditional culture of the nation.金陵科技学院学士学位论文 4.Residences and the Features 4. Residences and the Features China, one of the birthplaces of the oldest civilizations in the world, has a culture of extensive influence on the world history. The Great Britain is like other countries on the continent which had experienced the Roman Times, the Mid-Ages and the Christ Society, a typical country of western culture. The book of Travels of Marco Polo brought Chinese cultures into the European world and made great impact on peoples lives, including the British. Most of the British people showed great interest in Chinese Confucius, tea, china, classical gardens, etc. Then the culture of tea had been developed in a unique British way and the gardens of “Le Jardin Anglo-Chinois” had once been focused on attentively all over the European continent.Generally speaking, the distinctions between the architectural features of these two countries are obvious because they are typical countries of two extremely different culture patterns in the world.4.1 Chinese Residences Any country has not one certain style of house, but there must be a typical ones or a basic framework to be followed.China is the third largest country in the world with a large territory of various geographical conditions and the climates. As composed of 56 ethic groups, the cultures in China are of various kinds. For these reasons, the residences are of various styles. There are numbers of types of traditional living houses such as the bamboo houses in the southwest of the country, the “den residence” on the Loess Plateau and so on. However, among all the types of Chinese architectures, there is a basic form called quadrangle courtyard as the most original structure on which Chinese architectures developed. Someone explained how the courtyard developed from the basic structure of Chinese common dwellings:The original Chinese form of common people living house is the residence of three rooms in a line with a door in the central one Then as the population grows larger, the family builds houses lengthwise on the two sides and the opposite as the wing-rooms to form an enclosure in the middle. Such an enclosure is called the quadrangle courtyard. And for a bigger family, they base on the single courtyard and add to it more yards