American and chinese values中美价值观对比
我心依旧作文-我也追星作文600字
May 2005, Volume 3, No.5 (Serial No.20)
US-China Foreign Language, ISSN1539-8080, USA
Different Ethical Values in Chinese and
American Cultures
Qun Wang
*
Yuexiu
Foreign Languages College
Abstract: Ethical
values are tightly integrated with cultures.
Different cultures carry different ethical values.
Ethical value, as quite an important factor in
one culture, brightly reflects its culture by
governing an individual or
a collective’s
views, attitudes and methods when he or they deal
with objective realities. This paper is mainly to
probe the differences between collectivism and
individualism, which respectively represent the
Chinese and
American cultures, and the
cultural factors—philosophy and religion, which
result in the collectivism and the
individualism.
Key words: ethical value
culture collectivism philosophy religion
I. Introduction
1.1 What is ethical value?
Every individual, every unit, every community,
every class and every nation has its ethical
value. As to
ethical value, we have diverse
definitions as follows:
1) Ethical value is
people’s elementary perspective of value criterion
for scaling different things.
2) Ethical value
is the system of people’s faiths, beliefs and
ideals of basic values.
3) Ethical value,
which is the domination of all our actions, is the
summation of people’s notions, thoughts
and
attitudes as to what to be good or bad, what to
yearn, what to pursue, what to abnegate, what to
support, what
to oppose and so on.
4)
Ethical value is people’s subjective judgment of
the importance of things, the essential impetus to
people’s
actions and the base on which to gain
knowledge, master skills and shape attitude,
inclination and worldview.
Summarily speaking,
ethical value, as annotated in Grand Education
Thesaurus, is a notional system through
which
individuals look on objectives and appraise the
social importance and significance of objectives.
It can be
classified as primary, secondary and
tertiary. The figure below is the Classification
of Ethical Values of Chinese
and Americans.
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
Chinese
welfares of the nation
welfares of
a community
personal pursuit, benefits,
behaviors
Americans
democracy, interest and benefit of the country
pursuits for material possessions
hospitality to guests
relief of the pain
and suffering of others;
1.2 Ethical value and
culture
As we can see, the people in one
culture act on how their culture guides them. As a
most important aspect in
cultural matters,
ethical value is the deep-seated sentiment or
perspective shared by members of a society that
will
often dictate the actions and behaviors
of its members. It governs what to say, when to
say, where to say and how
to say. And thus it
also reflects its culture.
*
Qun
Wang(1967-), male, lecturer of Yuexiu Foreign
Languages College; Research fields: English
teaching practice and educational
comparison;
Address: Yuexiu Foreign Languages College,
Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province; Postcode: 312000;
Tel: ,
; E-mail: wangqun513165@.
55
Different Ethical Values in Chinese and
American Cultures
So, as to be concluded, no
one’s ethical value comes into being or changes
without foundation. It is born
from and takes
root in culture. Culture carries and is also
represented by ethical value. In a word, ethical
value and
culture are tightly integrated with
each other. Different cultures give birth to
different ethical values.
II. Different
Ethical Values in Chinese and American Cultures
2.1 Cases across Chinese and American cultures
Below is an example observed by Helen Oatey
(1987):
A young American woman went to Hong
Kong to work, and at the time of her arrival she
knew nothing
about the Chinese culture or
language. On her way to school one day, she went
to the bank to get some money.
Unexpectedly,
the bank clerk asked her if she had had her lunch.
She was extremely surprised at such a question
because in the American culture it would be
regarded as an indirect invitation to lunch.
Between unmarried young
people it can also
indicate the young man’s interest in dating the
girl. Since this bank clerk was a complete
stranger to the girl, she hastily commented
that she had eaten already. After this she
proceeded to school and was
even more
surprised when one of the teachers asked her the
same question. In the following days she was asked
the same question again and again, and she
spent many hours trying to work out why so many
people kept asking
her this. Eventually she
came to a conclusion: the people must be concerned
about her health. She was somewhat
underweight
at the time, and so she concluded they must worry
that she was not eating properly! Only much later
did she discover that the question had no real
significance at all—it was merely a greeting.
Misunderstanding like this can easily occur.
Some more cases are given below:
1) In Chinese
greetings, you will often hear “Have you eaten
yethad your lunch”(asked after meal time),
“What have you done”, “Where have you been”,
“Where are you going” (asked on the way), “Are you
going to
work”, “Are you going home”, “Are you
taking a walk” (asked when meeting a neighbor),
“Are you full hungry”
(asked around meal
time), “Are you going shoppingdoing sport” (asked
when a certain thing is being done). In
America, people usually greet each other by
saying “HiHello”, “Good morningafternoonevening”,
“How are
you”, “How do you do”.
2) In
Chinese partings, the Chinese way of leave-taking
is relatively brief or even seems too abrupt.
“Chinese
visitors often stand up suddenly and
say ‘I’m leaving now’. As they move to the door,
they use phrases like ‘I’m
sorry to have
wasted your time’ or ‘I’ m sorry to have taken up
so much of your time’”(Helen Oatey). When the
guest is about to leave, it is polite for the
host to insist on the guest’s staying a little
longer. Moreover, the host
generally sees his
guest off to the door and usually even further.
When the host is not going to accompany the
guest for a distance, he may say to the guest,
“I’m not going to see you off afar” or “Please
walk slowly”. And the
guest will respond as
“Don’t see me off” or “Please go back”. In
American partings, a guest must hint several
times that he is leaving as the preparation
for leaving. Then, just before he leaves, he must
say something like
“Thank you for a lovely
afternoon” or “Thank you, I enjoyed this beautiful
evening”. After saying goodbye to
each other,
the host usually shows the guest to the door and
sees him off there.
3) As for compliment
responses, when being complimented by “Your shoes
are very pretty”, a Chinese may
reply with
“No, they are not as pretty as yours” or “Really?
I got them very cheap”, while an American may
reply
with a simple “Thanks” or “Oh, they are
ancient. I’ve had them for years”. When being
complemented by “You
have done a great job”, a
Chinese may respond with “Oh, that is the result
of joint efforts of my leaders and
colleagues”, while an American with a simple
“Thank you for your compliment” (Xu Lisheng).
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Different Ethical Values in
Chinese and American Cultures
4) During the
course of conversations, Chinese often talk about
things like “Where do you work”, “ How
much do
you earn in a month”, “How old are you”, “ Are you
married”, “How many people are there in your
family”, “What did you do last Sunday” and so
on. And Americans never talk about their privacy
but things like
weather and climate, trips and
journeys, and some other non-personal stuff.
2.2 Different ethical values
When a
Chinese speaker makes such greetings as those in
Case 1 on meeting, he is not really concerned
about or interested in whether you have eaten,
what you have done, where you have been, and
whether you are
really doing a certain thing,
but intends to make you feel that he is
considerate and thoughtful towards you and to
maintain a good relationship with you. These
greetings are not to be answered, you may nod or
smile and then
pass; moreover, he will always
go away before you answer. Such Chinese greetings
sound very strange to
Americans and often make
them feel very uncomfortable. They feel that their
own privacy is interfered. To them,
it has
nothing to do with others whether they have eaten,
what they have done, where they have been, and
whether
they are really doing a certain thing.
It is well illustrated in Chinese parting
expressions that Chinese always keep in mind
friendship, familiarity
and amicability, and
tend to show consideration and concern for others.
But Americans never do so. Even they
may think
“Why did you bother yourself wasting my time since
you think it was a waste of my time” (Helen
Oatey).
With regard to compliment
responses, Chinese always show modesty and value
solidarity, and emphasize
co-operation among
group members. They believe that individual
success is due to the collective effort of the
staff
in a unit, an organization or a
community, and they belittle their own efforts by
owing successes to others just to
keep the
harmonious world going. But Americans always show
pride and value independence, and emphasize
personal happiness and achievements. They
believe that individual success is due to personal
effort. That is why
most American heroes (in
art or history) are independent and tend to
accomplish their goals with little or no
assistance from others, which can be
illustrated from Abraham Lincoln’s endeavor (to be
a president) to make
himself an idol of most
Americans.
Chinese people value family so much
that they always try to be amicable and show much
concern for others
just as they do within a
family. Not surprisingly, in their conversations
they always talk of personal stuffs like age,
income, marriage and so on. Americans worship
privacy so much that they would like to be able to
do certain
things unobserved by others. They
believe that each person has his own separate
identity and personality, which
should be
recognized and reinforced. Therefore,
conversations with others’ personal stuffs and
activities involved
are not advocated.
As
far as social ethical value is concerned, Chinese
people do value and emphasize the interests of the
people,
the community and the whole nation.
They even sacrifice the interests of individuals
for those of the collective, as
is
sufficiently and clearly incarnated in those like
“Serve the people” (from Mao Zedong), “Common
wealth”
(from Deng Xiaoping) and “Power for
the people” (from Jiang Zemin). Unlike Chinese,
Americans emphasize
and focus on the interests
of the individual rather than those of the
collective. They even believe that there must be
something wrong with someone who fails to
demonstrate individualism, which can be seen from
American Grand
Elections and some sayings like
“God helps those who help themselves” and “He
travels the fastest who travels
alone”.
Through the above case studies, we can see
that what obviously attracts our attention to
differences in values
between Chinese culture
and American culture is the emphasis on whether to
perform individualism or
57
Different Ethical Values in Chinese and
American Cultures
collectivism. Chinese stress
the importance of the whole nation and community,
tend to emphasize the interests
and welfare of
the collective over those of the individual, value
considerations, concerns and thoughtfulness for
others, attach much importance to co-operation
and collective efforts, and think much of
friendship and
amicability and hospitality,
which we call collectivism. Americans, on the
contrary, emphasize the importance of
human
individuals in contrast to the social wholes, such
as families, classes or societies, to which they
belong,
stress the priority of individual
needs, interests and welfare over those of a
group, value individual rights and
freedom,
prefer the virtue of self-reliance and personal
independence and loosely knit social relationships
and
think more of individual roles than of
collective efforts, which we call individualism.
III. Cultural Factors Resulting in Ethical
Values
Different cultural factors may result
in different ethical values, and consequently, the
acknowledgement of
the cultural factors that
affect ethical values will facilitate the
understanding of the difference in ethical values.
Philosophy and religion are two important
elements of culture and are quite significant to
the study of
cross-cultural communication
because they are at the core of people’s thoughts
and actions. Just as Hoebel writes,
“In
selecting its customs for day-to-day living, even
the little things, the society chooses those ways
that accord
with its thinking and
predilections – ways that fit its basic postulates
as to the nature of things and what is
desirable and what is not”. Therefore, the
cognition of the philosophy and religion in each
culture can help us
understand why Chinese
value collectivism and why Americans value
individualism.
3.1 Chinese culture and
collectivism
Collectivism adhered to the
Chinese culture can be traced back to its root in
history. When it comes to the
Chinese
philosophy and religions, Confucianism, Taoism,
and Buddhism would inevitably be mentioned and
discussed. They are so tightly intertwined
that common Chinese who claim to have some
religious beliefs cannot
clearly tell from
which their beliefs come. But of the three,
Confucianism is the most influential one in
people’s
life. Confucius has set the basic
norms for the Chinese thinking pattern. According
to his doctrines, man himself
cannot live in
an isolated way and he is a being in relationship.
He must observe the world from the perception of
wholeness and humanism. Thus man should be
more considerate of others than himself, that is
to say, no matter
what happens, he should show
concern, benevolence and love for others first,
and brush aside self-interests. It has
been
over two thousand years since Confucius advocated
justice, propriety, wisdom and confidence as the
criteria
of a good man. Another two important
doctrines established by Confucius are The Trinity
of Heaven, Earth and
Man and Five Cardinal
Relations. Both attach much importance to
harmonious relations with others.
Taoism is
also important with its exertions on Chinese
people’s thinking patterns. As is written in Lao-
tzu,
everything has two opposite sides: good
and bad, right and wrong, long and short, bright
and dark, motional and
motionless. Everything
will develop into the opposite direction when it
becomes extreme. Therefore, limitations
are
emphasized in Taoism. That is why Chinese always
do things in moderation and in a harmonious way.
Buddhism, originated in India, has also
greatly affected Chinese people’s life. Buddhists
hold that each
individual has the power to
relieve the pain and suffering resulted from egos,
that the salvation from pain and
suffering
lies only in our efforts, and that only destroying
his ego can one achieve happiness and alleviate
suffering. The noble doctrines which deeply
affect the Chinese people are “Life is suffering”,
“Desire is the cause
of suffering”, “Only
through the elimination of desire can suffering be
relieved ”, “Conducting in moderation is
the
way to relieve suffering”, “Envy and desire keep
people away from peace and happiness” and “Good
deeds
58
Different Ethical Values
in Chinese and American Cultures
will be
rewarded and evils will be punished”.
To sum
up, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism in Chinese
culture have greatly encouraged the Chinese
people to avoid extremes and take eclectic
attitudes and try to be humble, meek and mild.
They have greatly
affected the Chinese
people’s thinking patterns, thus have shaped the
Chinese people’s ethical value into
Collectivism.
3.2 American Culture and
Individualism
As is the case with the
collectivism in the Chinese culture, individualism
in the American culture also has a
long
history. American culture was descended from the
ancient Greek Culture; so American culture is
firstly
influenced by ancient Greek traditions
and philosophy with the Aristotelian system as its
representative. It views
man as a rational
being available to factual and sound reasoning and
views that man’s power is limitless. Man is
created and supported by the omnipotent God,
and man can develop all his potentialities and
change the nature
based on his will.
Also, in Christianity traditions, the pursuit
of personal happiness and achievements is highly
valued,
earnestly believed and well
appreciated as a fundamental social virtue, which
is important not only to each other,
but also
to the society and God. And according to
Christianity, man is powerful and he is always the
winner in his
struggle against nature, and man
should first love himself, and then love others.
With the influence of the
Christianity
doctrines, eighty-five percent of American people
claim themselves to be Christians, a Supreme
Being (William O. Douglas), as can be
illustrated from the prayers before sessions of
Congress and state
legislatures and the
national motto “In God We Trust”.
After the
migration to the New Land, Americans attempted to
obtain a new life, and needed to survive on the
new land, so they had to believe in
themselves, depend on themselves and therefore
believe in individualism. All
this can be
manifested in words like self-control, self-
confidence, self-esteem, self-reliance, and self-
respect. What
is more, many Puritans, in order
to escape persecution, moved to the New Land,
where their values were well
suited to
survival. With them, they brought to America their
value orientation and worldview, which have
Americans themselves as being selected by God
to remain to be with God’s grace and trust them in
improving
conditions through their own
efforts.
Till now, we know that American
culture is greatly influenced by the ancient Greek
culture and Christianity
and Puritanism, which
have shaped the Americans’ conception of
individualism---the paramount element that
speaks for Americans’ characters.
IV.
Conclusion
Collectivism and Individualism are
two different ethical values developed from
different cultures. In the former,
the
interests, goals and achievements of the
collective are strongly stressed rather than the
individual’s; personal
beliefs come after the
common beliefs; willingness to show concerns for
other people and to co-operate with
others is
highly thought of. In the latter, personal
interests, happiness and achievements are fully
emphasized;
things such as independence,
equality, freedom, privacy and democracy are
cherished. As is discussed and
demonstrated in
this paper, of the two kinds of ethical values, we
cannot tell which is good or which is bad. In the
Chinese culture and Chinese people’s view,
Collectivism is a good virtue, while in the
American culture and
American people’s view;
individualism is not selfish but a good virtue.
But the topic of the difference between
Collectivism and Individualism is a problem of
intercultural communication. The better cognition
of this topic can
59
Different
Ethical Values in Chinese and American Cultures
make us English learners have a better
understanding of the American culture and ethical
values, and avoid
misunderstanding,
embarrassment and awkwardness arising in the
communication with English natives.
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