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Conducting a comparative study on different thought patterns will do great help to establishment and further development of Sino-Western cultural communication. The paper attempts to make a comparative analysis of Chinese and Westerners’ thought patterns under the context of culture, so that we can reduce misunderstandings and barriers in cross-cultural communication as much as possible.
II. Comparison on Chinese and Western Thought Patterns
2.1 Subjective and Objective
The most significant difference of thought patterns is subjective and objective. Chinese people are long affected by traditional philosophies which proclaim the integrity character of the world and everything is orderly connected. It is also called “heaven and man are a whole”. Chinese observations of the world focus on the subjective experience. Their articles, newspapers, compositions always choose human or potential subject as the subjects while Western people prefer to use objects or unbiological words especially in their documents, scientific papers (Li 93-96). Because people in the Western countries pay more attention to basis of the objects and nature, the targets aimed to the outer world, different from the experience inside. So they dedicate to observing and analyzing nature thus formed an opposite pattern of thought, the objective thought. To express same feelings, these differences could be easily seen from the words they use. For example, if a Chinese and an American express their fears about the examinations. Chinese would make sentence like “I am afraid I can not pass the exams”. While Americans probably say “Exams make me upset”. Same feelings make different choices of the words. The science of medical could be another obvious study to analyze the thoughts behind the differences. Chinese medical science originates from a society in which Shen Nong tested a hundred varieties of herbs and summarized the physical functions and the relevant therapies. While medical science in the West originates from the experiments of dissection to gain recognition of the human organs.
2.2 Synthesis and Analysis
Synthesis means regarding several parts of the objects as a whole, putting the characters and relations into the whole consideration. This type of thought is proper for Chinese people because the meanings of their languages include complex components to judge under special contexts. To understand them, one has to be capable of finding out the connotations behind those words through the relations between sentences rather than the strict organizations of the grammars. It is like waves of waters, approach one by one to get to the point finally. Analysis is the thought which breaks an integral object into parts and distinguishes different parts, characters and their relations. Western people belong to this type. Because they highlight the importance of the parts, like the dissection experiments in their medical science, put parts in the first place to research and emphasize the complement of the logical structures. The ancient poem “To Wang Lun” made by Li Bai could be a little difficult for Westerners who posses an analysis thought pattern because last two sentences in this poem “The Peach Flower Lake is a thousand fathoms deep, but it cannot compare, Wang Lun, with the depth of your love for me.” According to them, does The Peach Flower Lake’s depth of several thousands has any relationship with anything else? What does Li Bai wants to say in the end? Questions like these may puzzle them. Because they couldn’t understand the whole poem until they reconsider the relations between sentences. But for Chinese readers, the representatives of the thought of synthesis would easily grasp the potential relations. Another example would be the advertisements in different countries. Like public advertisements in China, they use the slogan “go home for supper” to remind the government officials to be the leaders in shaping of the society to a harmonious one. In the advertisement scene, an uniform official picks up the ringing phone and said that he wouldn’t go to the restaurant for supper, instead he would go home. For Westerners, they do not understand the connection between going home for supper and the harmonious society, because they don’t know Chinese harmonious society requires everyone to be thrifty on resources’ consumption and the officials are the leaders in the process. Without this hidden knowledge on that advertisement and lack of the relations of the relevant, Westerners could not understand the meanings of them. In art designs, there are differences which can reflect the thought patterns. Chinese word like “piao” could be beautified with a cluster of wind to add to the right side to impress the readers with the unity of the shape and the connotation. The same case in English words, artists would add “mbition” to the letter “A” to gift the letter an impression. Compare two types of designs we can clarify that Chinese artists prefer the whole aesthetic effects by collecting relevant elements while Western designers choose the specific organizations to reform a meaning.