A Study on Cultural Connotations of Animal Words in Chinese and English

Abstract

Language and culture are inseparable from each other and words are the direct representation of culture. In both English and Chinese, there are a great many animal words which carry unique cultural connotations in each culture. Through the comparison on the cultural connotations of animal words in both languages, it is found that the same word may have divergent connotations and different words also can carry similar implications. The findings imply that it is necessary to better understand these cultural connotations in order to conduct a successful cross-cultural communication.