中西方动物词语文化对比(2)

中西方 动物词语 文化对比 英语 论文

clothing", means someone who seems to be friendly but is in fact, unpleasant, which in accordance with Chinese phrase,“披着羊皮的狼”.

There are other examples. Snail is slow (as slow as a snail). Fox is cunning and sly. Bee is busy (as busy as a bee) and monkey is naughty (as naughty as a monkey).

The similarity of human evolutionary process and the civilization development is the main reason that the same animal words have the same cultural connotations. III. The same animal words have different cultural connotations

It is natural that under different culture, different backgrounds cause different association to the same words. The most impressing animal is dragon. As we all known, dragon is the most suitable image presented the Chinese tradition. Once Chinese people mentioned dragon, the phrase like “望子成龙”, “龙腾虎跃”, “龙的传人”etc. come to their minds. In addition, Chinese people have special affection for this animal. While in Western culture, dragon is seen as horrible and evil. In the famous old English heroic epic poem, Beowulf, the dragon was depicted as a great evil which finally killed by the hero Beowulf. The phrase "saw dragon's teeth" came from a Greek myth, in the legends of the Phoenician prince Cadumus the dragon's teeth, once planted, would grow into fully armed warriors. Now, this is used as a metaphor to refer to doing something that has the effect of fomenting disputes. And English slang " chase the dragon" means "to smoke the drug heroin".

Another example is bat. In Chinese culture, because of bat is the homophone of happiness（蝙蝠的“蝠”字与幸福的“福”字同音）, bat was the symbol of auspicious. Especially when five bats appeared at the same time, which means the greatest happiness（五福齐天）. In comparison, the western people connect some bad and evil things to bat. As a result, the word "batty" means slightly crazy and "old bat" refers to an unpleasant old woman.

Because of the difference of the traditional culture, aesthetic orientation and the type of thinking, the same animal word have different cultural connotations.

IV. The same animal word have on responding cultural connotations in Eastern and Western culture

With the development of language, the animal words may have abundant and luxuriant cultural connotations in one culture but have no association in another culture.

Cat is not a good image in Western culture, so if the sentence "And I suppose she