A Contrastive Study of the Semantic Association and Pragmatic Analysis of Animal Terms in English and Chinese 英语专业毕业论文.docVIP

A Contrastive Study of the Semantic Association and Pragmatic Analysis of Animal Terms in English and Chinese Abstract: Language, which is often referred to as the carrier and container of culture, to a large extent, reflects the social life of different people. People use language to store and transmit their experience. In the broad sense, language is the symbolic representation of a people, and it comprises their historical and religious backgrounds as well as their ways of living and thinking. Nevertheless, due to different geographical surroundings, dissimilar ways of logical thinking, different aesthetic standards and different social systems, it is a widespread phenomenon that the same word can evoke different emotions among different people. Chinese and English can not be exceptional, too. Because of that, due attention should be given to the analysis and comparison of the cultural connotation of the words. It is especially shown in the expression of animal terms in English and Chinese. Animals, having a closing connection with people since the existence of human being, inflict a profound influence on human’s life. Thus animals are often used to convey people’s emotion and gradually acquire unique connotations beyond their literal meanings. But when it comes to make a contrastive study of animal terms, it may be somewhat an ambiguous conclusion to simply point their differences out. Actually, semantic association and pragmatic analysis of animal terms in English and Chinese is a far more intricate stuff. And this paper will make an intensive research on this problem in a hope of better understanding the connotations of animal terms. Just as the title of the paper illustrates, this article mainly focuses on contrastive study, that is to say, there will be a lot of comparisons throughout the article. Through comparison, we can have a deeper insight of similarities and differences of animal terms in English and Chinese. More