霍尔理论背景下汉英请求策略对比研究

Comparative Study of Request Strategies in Chinese and English in the Background of Hall's Theory

人类学家霍尔提出的语境论认为中国文化属于高语境文化,而西方大多数英语国家属于低语境文化。文章在语境论的框架下,阐述了英汉请求策略特点及其差异的深层文化根源。英语请求语多样化的语句层面策略与汉语中语篇策略的广泛应用,体现了低语境文化多用明码信息,高语境文化惯用暗码信息的特点。同时,与处于低语境的英美文化相比,中国文化对请求策略影响因素人际距离、社会权力和强加度的认识与感知呈现两极化。

According to the context theory proposed by Anthropologist Edward T. Hall,Chinese culture is high-context culture while the majority of English speaking cultures in the West fall into low-context culture. This paper explores the characteristics of request strategies in English and Chinese,and the cultural reasons underlying their differences in the framework of context theory. The diversity of request strategies at utterance level in English and the extensive use of discourse strategies in Chinese requests epitomize the preference of overt language code in low context culture and covert language code in high context culture. Compared to the low-context British and American cultures,Chinese culture exhibits polarization in the perception of distance,power and level of imposition,which leads to the differences in the choice of request strategies in the two languages.