Cultural features in speech acts: A sino-american comparison

The paper argues that cross-cultural communication between Chinese and Americans often runs into trouble. Some factors which block communication lie in culture-governed structures of language. But in many cases, such problems occur in utterances. As Chinese and Americans subconsciously follow their own cultural beliefs and norms when in contact with each other, their speech acts are governed by these cultural differences. The paper discusses certain culture- and language-related phenomena which occur in the interaction between the two peoples. It demonstrates that some communicative obstacles are immediate consequences of the differences in styles of expression, structures of information and other cultural conventions which people of the two countries are traditionally accustomed to. In view of the fact that the cultural messages are reflected in people’s daily use of language, culture elements should not be overlooked in language learning. The paper attempts to explore the ways of including culture teaching in the language classroom.