DifferencesBetweenChineseandEnglishThinkingModes

1、Differences Between Chinese and English Thinking ModesI. IntroductionLanguage by nature is the embodiment of human thoughts and thoughts in turn is the mental reflection of the world around us on basis of some analysis, generalization, judgment and reasoning. Animals have thoughts as well, but their

2、 awkward sounds for communication are far from being language. Language is therefore closely related to and supported by human thoughts. That is to say, language has no basis for its existence if there is no thought. But thoughts, though accessible by various means, are best represented in language

3、and can thus best fulfill its obligations to the speakers by such means. Language as an arbitrary, phonetic and morphologic semiotic and audio system of communication, has long defined as human and is thus the most convincing distinctive features of human beings from animals.The thinking patterns ar

4、e one of the most important cues in culture. It is closely related to cultures and embodies the characteristics of cultural psychology. Besides, the modes of thinking also are closely related to language. Different modes of thinking are embodied in language.(i) The relationship among language, cultu

5、re and thoughtLanguage is part of culture. Such as Chinese language is part of Chinese culture. Each country has its own language in a specific culture. However, their relationship is not just between part and whole. Language is the carrier and contained of culture, as many aspects of culture can be

6、 expressed in language. As a mirror of culture, language is strongly influenced and shaped by culture. In all, language and culture are closely related; each influences and shapes the other.Language is an instrument used in the communication of thought. It is closely related to thought, too. It repr

7、esents thought and is influenced by thought. In turn, thought is influenced by language. In addition, thought is determined by cultural value. Their relationships with each other seem more complex. In a word, each of them influenced and shapes others. They are seem as three parts of a whole.(ii) Dif

8、ferent ways of thinking between Chinese and Western“The ways of thinking is quite different, actually, people live in certain area have their own way of thinking. It connects to various kinds of factors, such as geography, history, nation and so on. The ways of thinking are the important reason of c

9、ultural difference. It includes knowledge, concepts, methods, language and custom and so on.”(邓炎昌483)There factors influence each other, which led to different ways of thinking. Therefore, the ways of thinking have their own characteristics, like geography characteristics, social characteristics and

10、 national characteristics, etc. according to geography characteristics, it can be divided into Han nation, English and American nation, etc. Here we will make a comparison on Chinese and Western ways of thinking.“The different ways of thinking in fact are the reflection of cultural difference. Peopl

11、e who live in different areas for a long time have different cultural characteristics; therefore, their ways of thinking are different,” (ibid. 484) .Under the influence of different geography environments, life styles, customs and different cultural values; the East and West are different from ways

12、 of thinking. Let us examine some phenomena:In the college, a foreign teacher is teaching in a class, he is talkative and expressive. Everyone listens to him interestingly. Suddenly, he stops and asks them a question. However, the students dont know how to answer, they dont tell the answers. The tea

13、cher got a little angry but he had no idea on their behavior. This scene often happens in Chinese classroom. In the foreigners eyes, they consider that keeping silent is not a good way when we contact with others. Even you dont understand, you should say something instead of keeping silent, as it of

14、ten is regarded as rude and impolite.The reason lies in that the East and the West have a different way of thinking. The Eastern people are conservative, introvert and inactive, they put more emphasis on harmony, and they like common and stable life; while the Western people are more open-minded, ex

15、trovert and active, they like changeable life and thus they emphasize on competition. In this way, their different ways of thinking lead to their different understanding on each others behavior. If Chinese see somebody is talkative, they could think he or she wants to extent himself or herself to be

16、 the focus of everyone.In China, we seldom see a couple making close contact in public. They are always walking side by side in a certain distance. While in the West, the couple will open to the public; they are free to show that they are a couple. Even they meet the acquaintances; they always give

17、them a hug or kiss as greeting. Controversially, Chinese will shake hands with their friends but seldom hug them. They dont kiss them as they regard it as an intimate action between husband and wife.The reason why the east and the west people behave so differently is that people live in the East emp

18、hasize on ethic principal, morality, they focus on direct feeling and image. The westerners focus on freedom, democracy and emphasize on individual. In all, Chinese traditional way of thinking has its own characteristics. It emphasizes the morality, harmony of the society; it promotes the collectivi

19、sm, responsibility and devotion and so on. The western way of thinking also has its own characteristics. It emphasizes on logic and science, individual achievement, it promotes human right, equality and so on.The great geographic distance between the British and the Chinese peoples, together with th

20、e accompanying different living conditions and cultural environments, has much accounted for the diverse conceptual patterns of the two nations. Such conceptual differences have been duly reflected in and shed great influence on the two languages. Translation between the two languages is consequentl

21、y far beyond linguistic rendering, but more of cultural transferring and exchange of conceptual patterns. II. Literature ReviewAccording to Jia Dejiang, “thinking patterns, thought characteristics and thinking styles are the philosophical mechanism of language production. Language actually attaches

22、closely to the thought that is the profound mechanism.”(Jia DeJiang 166) Thinking patterns are the deep-rooted mechanism in the formulation and development of language, which in turn promotes the specialties in certain conceptual patterns. Language is the carrier of reflection and abstraction of rea

23、lity, and mode of thought is the conscious activity when people reflect and recognize the objective reality.（汪德华 36）The differences between thinking patterns are the main reasons that result in the differences of language forms, so the study of the transition between different languages should begin

24、 with the study of modes of thought in close connection with the cultures and the languages. Another well-recognized Chinese linguistic scholar Liu Miqing has offered apparently different but essentially similar remarks on the relations between language and thought. His standing is that modes of tho

25、ught has controlled over languages (ibid.35) , and that languages are the concrete manifestation of modes of thought.English-Chinese modes of thought have their own characteristics in thinking core, thinking pattern, cognition habits and thinking principles. As a tool for communication the basic att

26、ribute of English and Chinese are the same. But because of the influence of their own cultures, there are many differences between the two. The English individualism and the Chinese entirety, hypotaxis as against parataxis, as passive vs active, static vs dynamic, and impersonal vs personal, have lo

27、ng been recognized as the most distinctive features of the two conceptual patterns which are justified by the apparently different cultures and living methods. As Nida once puts it, the most important different characteristic between Chinese and English is the difference of parataxis and hypotaxis.(

28、Zhang Sijie&Zhang Boran 13) Liu Miqing holds the opinion that hypotaxis and parataxis are the “unique characteristic” for English and Chinese. (ibid .13) Conceptual pattern, or mode of thought, is a very complicated abstract conception connected closely to philosophy. English people prefer indiv

29、idualism, which lead to their subordinating the recognized objects into small parts. While Chinese people like entirety, they prefer to take the world as a whole. Thinking patterns have been clearly reflected on languages, as a result of which English is hypotactic and Chinese is paratactic. R. Kapl

30、an found that in their English writing English learners of different nations show national tendencies in accurate correspondence with their native tongue and national thinking patterns. For instance, the Chinese and the Korean learners are spiral while the native English learners are more straightfo

31、rward, and those of Latin (French and Spanish) cultural background are tortuous in approaching the theme, the Russians tend to be parallel and segmental and those of Arabian and Hebrew display parallel thinking modes. In this aspect, a Chinese scholar Zhang Daishan in his Chinese Thinking Tendencies

32、 (Zhang and el) summarizes the differences between the English and the Chinese in three aspects: unit vs. opposite, integrity and organic vs. concrete and mechanical as well as circulative vs. straightforward, with the former characteristic of the Chinese while the latter typical of the English. The

33、y hold that the Chinese are characterized in their thinking patterns by their introspection, pursue of similarity, circulation, stabilization and visual representation. Another Chinese scholar Zhang Guangming in his Conceptual Thinking in Translation between English and Chinese concludes that such d

34、ifferences are best displayed in four aspects, e.g. linguistic concept, comprehension vs. reasoning, comprehensive vs. analytic and unity vs. oppositeness. Lian Shuneng in his essay “On the Thinking Patterns of the Chinese and the Westerners” develops the differences into ten aspects. According to R

35、ong Kaiming (1989, p30), thinking modes refers to “a established system of thinking patterns, thinking methods and thinking procedures of the subject in their reflection of the objective world.” Thought is a intrinsic process of human brains in understanding and memorizing the physical as well as no

36、n-physical world that we live in, and is a special organic function of the brain. The close interrelation between language and thought further denotes the linguistic differences between different nations as the realization of their thinking modes or conceptual modes. Therefore different languages of

37、 different nations can well explain their different thinking modes. As Fu Lei once put it, “the Easterners are essentially different from the Westerners in their thinking modes. The Easterners tend to be general, inductive, implicit and denotative while the Westerners are more analytic, intricate an

38、d detailed and descriptive. The two mentalities can hardly be combined. (Fu Lei，521). In this sense, translation between English and Chinese is apparently a linguistic transition but essentially mental transferring between two thinking modes. Too much practice have proved that such transferring of t

39、hinking modes are not only necessary and applicable but also an efficient means to pursue quality translation.So far much has been done and said on the interrelationship between language and modes of thought (or conceptual patterns, as preferred in the present thesis). The most outstanding is Sapir-

40、Whorf hypothesis. Much criticized though, the hypothesis is more trustworthy in that it offers a new insight into the interrelationship between language and thought. Its strong version, the so-called “language relativity”, holds that language has determining effects on modes of thought, which is for

41、med relatively to languages and different languages will bring on different thinking patterns (Zhao Xia & Xu Ruifeng, 35) is still more often than not a topic of debate in the linguistic community which convincingly proves its marking-stone significance in language study.（王武兴，2004 ）III Differenc

42、es between Chinese and English Thinking Modes As discussed above, differences between the Chinese and the English in their thinking patterns are obvious among scholar. The differences among scholars attitudes or classification of the thinking patterns between the two nations are not essentially dive

43、rsified but rather lie in the degree of detailed typology. Actually, the issue can be approached and considered from various viewpoints. Here are but a few instances for illustration.3.1 Differences between Chinese Thinking Patterns and English Thinking Patterns. Visual Thinking VS Rational Thinking

44、The visualized thinking mode, or empirical synthesizes thinking pattern as Zheng Yanhong (Zheng Yanhong, 2003 )puts it, establishes the essential difference between the Chinese and the English nation who favors the rational analytic thinking modes. The Chinese is perceptual in their comprehensive th

45、ought, but the English and other Western nations lay have developed their own rational and analytic thinking modes. In the empirical comprehensive thinking, the human and the nature (including society) are considered as an organic whole, with the “beauty gathers” (or the union of heaven and human) a

46、s its basic characteristic. The doctrine of “yin and yang as one” (or “masculine and feminine elements in one body”) in the Chinese philosophy, not denying the opposition though, lays greater emphasis on the aspect of unity. But the separation of God and human (or the isolation of the heavenly from

47、the earthly) in the English and the Westerners philosophy stresses the opposition aspect though not obviously denying the unity. Such difference has been typical of the two different thinking modes. The Chinese stresses the whole and abstract, and the Westerners stress the components and the specifi

48、c; the Chinese favors synthesis while the westerners analysis. For instance, when talking about time, the Chinese always start from general units and move on to smaller units, but the English is opposite; and this is also true of their expression of locations. Even in their acquaintance introduction

49、, the Chinese would list the titles (whole) first (from the higher to the lower) before referring to the specific names (individual), but the English would announce the specific name first (individual), then list a succession of duties from the lower to the higher. The westerners, esp. the English,

50、have been accustomed to fuzzy thinking since the ancient ages under the philosophical doctrines of the ancient Greek and Roman thinkers. In such philosophical concept, logic and formal testimony is the chief concern and concepts, judgment and reasoning dominate the thinking procedures and thus great

51、 emphasis has been laid on the obscure reflection on the world around us. Thats why various concepts, methods and principles abound in western philosophy and essays. The Chinese, on the other hand, seem more favorite of concrete images and tend to reflect on the world from the view point of specific

52、 objects. They would rather describe the objects to generalized principles and inspirations. That to great extent accounts for the image thinking modes of the Chinese. E.g.S1a. But this very formulation is indicative of the understanding attitude. S1b. 但这一说法本身就清楚地表明了其基本态度。 S2a. His weariness and inc

53、reasing heat determined him to sit down in the first convenient shade. S2b. 他疲惫不堪，天气也越来越炎热，于是他下定决心一碰到舒适的阴凉处就坐下休息。 S3a. Shortness of time has required the omission of some countries. S3b. 由于时间不够，他取消了对某些国家的访问。In the above specimen of S1a, S2a and S3a, , the subjects are not any person or object but ra

54、ther some state or concepts although the sentences are more person-oriented. Yet in the Chinese version, the persons concerned are used as the subjects to directly reveal the speakers concern. Even when the Chinese means to express some attitude or impression, they may not state it directly but rath

55、er use metaphor or indications by means of some specific images. E.g. S4a.He had sacrificed with less visibility in the policy decision. S4b.在决策过程中，他已经不那么抛头露面了。 S5a.我的心里七上八下的。 *S5b.There are seven ups and eight downs in my heart? S5c.My mind is greatly upset. The concept of “visibility” in S4a is re

56、placed by the image expression of “抛头露面” in S4b in which “头”(head) and “面”(face) are used to show his presence or visibility in the occasions. In S5a and S5b, the specific numbers of “七”(seven) and “八”(eight) in the Chinese are replace by “upset” in English because the Chinese phrase “七上八下” just use

57、 the two numbers to vividly describe the get chaos in the speakers mind. Yet S5b, the direct rendering sound rather confusing to English readers as few of them can understand why there are such things as “seven ups and eight downs” in a persons mind. Such instances are just abundant in our daily spe

58、ech, not to mention the numerous classic essays and literary masterpieces and EST papers. Generalizing Thinking VS Analytical ThinkingThe differences of philosophy and cultural background between English and Chinese have resulted in the rethinking of the Han nationality as an entirety thinking count

59、ry and the English people individual characteristics of thinking. The Chinese people are concerned more with their own bodies in expressing emotions, so intuition thinking is the main feature of their mode of thought, for which people study objects as a whole and emphasize entirety. Chinese philosophy is systematical naturalism. （毛荣贵 420）In the English thinking pattern, individualism is greatly emphasized. The English people link their own