论文总字数：35483字

摘 要

随着社会的发展，文化在经济全球化中起着越来越重要的作用。现在，广告因其特殊功能：1. 表达功能 2. 信息功能 3. 呼唤功能在社会发展中越来越重要。而且文化价值观可以在广告中体现，然而不同的广告体现了不同的文化价值观。本文以Hofstede的文化纬度理论和Hall的文化语境为理论基础。根据Hofstede和Hall的理论，本文作者主要从权力文化，男性文化，背景文化和中心主义四个方面比较中美广告中的文化价值观的不同点，作者同时在以人为本的思想，对品质追求和实用价值三个方面寻求中美广告中的文化价值观的相同点。最后，本文旨在减少文化交流过程中存在的障碍，增进对文化交流的理解，促进文化交流的融合，和加强文化交流。

关键词：广告；文化价值观；对比研究

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

2.1 Studies on advertising 1

2.2 Studies on cultural values 3

2.3 Theoretical basis 5

3. Differences in Cultural Values Reflected in Chinese and American Advertising 5

3.1 Differences in power distance 6

3.2 Differences in macho culture 7

3.3 Differences in cultural background 8

3.4 Differences in human centrism 9

4. Similarities in Cultural Values Reflected in Chinese and American advertising 11

4.1 Similarity in the idea of people orientation 11

4.2 Similarity in the pursuit of quality 11

4.3 Similarity in practical values 12

5. Conclusion 13

Works Cited 14

1. Introduction

With the development of society, advertisements are playing more important role in the globalization of the world economy. A wonderful advertisement can be the key in the fierce business competition. At the same time, scholars and researchers have been doing unremitting work to create competing advertisements. During the research, various translation theories are employed, like cross-culture communication theory and so on.

Current advertisements reflect different cultural values. This thesis is based on Hofstede’s Model of Cultural Dimensions and Hall’s background cultural theory. Depending on Hofstede and Hall’s theories, the author makes comparisons between Chinese and American cultural values on advertising from four aspects: Power distance, Macho Culture, Cultural Background and Human Centrism. Meanwhile, to find out similarities between Chinese and American cultural values on advertising from thress points: thought people oriented, the pursuit to quality and practical values.

The discussion of common characteristics and the differences between the cultural contents have been reflected in the Chinese and English advertising languages. It is obviously much more significant and meaningful for the advertisers to know how to take advantage of the advertisement under the given cultural background, especially when they are engaged in the transnational advertising company. Therefore, serving as a cultural carrier, Chinese advertising language contains particular oriental cultural color while American advertising language is shaped by its own cultural features. The thesis can help a lot to reinforce people’s cultural awareness, improve the development of cross-culture advertising, decrease cultural barriers, and promote cultural communication.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Studies on advertising

2.1.1 Definition of advertising

In many dictionaries and books, different kinds of definition for advertising and advertisement can be found. In Collins English-Chinese Dictionary (32) “advertising is the activity of creating advertisements and making sure people see them.” In Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (33) “advertising is the business of encouraging people to buy goods by means of advertisement.” In Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (30) “advertising is the activity and industry of advertising things to people on television, in newspaper, on the Internet.” Although advertising means different things to different people, the basic purpose is to create brand awareness and loyalty, in order to stimulate demand and increase market share.

The word “advertise” is originated from the Latin word “advertere”, which means “to inform somebody of something” or “to make known to the public.” (Mueller.B 55) There are various definitions for advertising. Advertising is defined as “a method of delivering a message from a sponsor though an impersonal medium, to many people.” “the use of mass media to carry paid massage for a commercial purpose or to advance a cause, institution, or political candidate” and “any paid from of non-personal presentation and promotion of idea, goods or service by of identified sponsor.” (Mueller.B 55)

To sum up, advertisements have the same functions: 1. to express the information that the product contains 2. to attract consumers to purchase products the advertisement has introduced.

2.1.2 Function of advertisement

Advertisements have a powerful effect on people and their behaviors. Advertisements can help people to realize a product, then to remember it, despite visual content and design in advertising have a great impact on consumers. So the choice of mode to convey specific messages with the intention of influencing consumers is of importance in advertising writing and translation.

Peter Newmark (Newmark 32) has illustrated three main functions of advertisements: the expressive, the informative and the vocative functions.

1. Expressive Function

The main purpose of an advertisement is to stimulate mind share of a certain product or service among consumers in order to facilitate them to remember the brand or to urge them to buy it.

2. Informative Function

A great deal of knowledge of products and service derives from the advertisements. Though advertisement language, we distinguish one product from another. The authentic and concrete information about the products or service is conveyed to the consumers.

3. Vocative Function

Information being successfully conveyed to the consumers is only the first step, the curiosity is created and the desire of trying the products is stimulated. Advertisement language which attempts to persuade people to buy products is high-engagement advertisement language. It aims at calling on people to act, think, and feel, so as to react in the way intended by the advertisement. Therefore, the vocative function is also called the persuasive function, the demand certain function or the get-action function.

In general, advertisements express the information of the shape, the size, the usage and the other particular narration of products. Secondly, since products have been introduced to the public, the advertisers are longer to draw people’s attention to buy their products; namely, the advertisement is full of persuasion.

2.2 Studies on cultural values

Guan Jialing, a famous cultural scholar in China, has put forward that all the problems discussed or studied in intercultural communication research, value is one of the most important problems and deserves the great attention. Values take root in social life and provide criteria for behaviors. (Guan Jialing 27-29) “They prescribe which actions and ways are better than others; they are not descriptions of fact, but possess content and emotion and contribute to social reality.” (William 1970) 

Cultural values are values that tend to permeate a culture. Cultural values are the goodness or desirability of certain actions or attitudes among members of the culture. Cultural values are transmitted by a variety of sources (family, media, school, church, state and so on) and therefore, tend to be broad-based, enduring, and relatively stable. (Fang Yangyang 56) Cultural values guide both perception and communication. That is that values get translated into action. An understanding of cultural values helps readers appreciate the behavior of the other people. For example, the American value of directness and the exchange of eye contact may cause to apply one trick of focusing on the space between the eyebrows and until that, readers can make eye contact. What is more, an awareness of cultural values also helps the readers understand own behaviors. For instance, the values of time, moderation with the value of harmony can be associated with patience. (Feng Wei 23)

2.2.1 Dominant Chinese cultural values

Cultural values are founded with the development of history. China is a country that has a very long history. Chinese dominant cultural values possess the typical features of the East.

As the Chinese tradition, Confucianism deems that man is innately or basically good. Confucius upheld man’s inherent goodness, which can be seen from his teachings like “human beings are innately good” and “humanity is to love men”. Mencius further developed Confucius’ theory of man’s innate goodness. He emphasized that sense of pity, sense of shame, and sense of telling the right things from the wrong ones were the virtues which people were born with. The thought human beings are innately good is the one of Chinese theory of human nature.

People in China believe in that the harmony is precious. Human beings should think twice before acting in case of hurting others. As is said that, “A gentleman uses his tongue but not his fists”, which verifies the thought of harmony precious. Therefore, Chinese harmony precious can be seen in the politics, culture, economy and so on.

2.2.2 Dominant American cultural values

America is a young country but its history, culture, polity and economy are stronger than most counties out of the world.

Under the huge influence of American Puritan ancestors, the most of them believe that human beings are guilty, and must be saved by God. The traditional thought has been blended in American culture.

Heroism can be found everywhere in America. It is the epitome of time and culture. And individualism can represent well. At the same time, people in America pursue to respect and follow the example of heroes. Heroism is been highly praised to create the atmosphere of superiority. As far as I am concerned, it makes American pay more attention to themselves not to others, which may neglect the importance of cooperation.

What is more, American pays more attention to privacy. “Privacy is the state of being alone and not watched or disturbed by other people.” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary 1575) People in America are prone to set principles to avoid others invade own places.

Cultural values are viewed as the principle for people who come from different countries. Nowadays, it is peculiarity that draws people’s attention to wonder to know and get it when people see the advertisement. So advertisements sometimes embody the products’ characteristics and they must have individuals. As a result, individuals exposed to an advertising message corresponding to their culture are likely to be comprehended better and this comprehension could bring to persuasion including the decision to buy the products. Advertising is playing an important role in the field of cultural values.

2.3 Theoretical basis

Geert Hofstede’s impressive studies of cultural differences in value orientation offer another approach to understanding the range of cultural differences. Hofstede’s approach is based on the assertion that people carry mental programs or “software of the mind” that is developed during childhood and is reinforced by their culture. These mental programs contain the ideas of a culture and are expressed through its dominant values. To identify the principal values of different cultures, Hofstede surveyed over 100000 IBM employees in seventy-one countries. Subsequent to his original research, Hofstede and others have extended the investigations to additional countries not originally included in the IBM sample, and he recently extended his theorizing to incorporate current research. (Xu Lisheng 99)

Through theoretical reasoning and statistical analyses, Hofstede identifies five dimensions along which dominant patterns of a culture can be ordered: individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, masculinity versus femininity and long-term versus short-term orientation to time.

Edward.T.Hall, whose writings about the relationship between culture and communication are well known, classifies cultures by the amount of information implied by the setting or context of the communication itself, regardless of the specific words that are spoken.

Hall has observed that meaning and context are inextricably bound up with each other. While a verbal code can be analyzed on some levels independent of context, in real life the code, the context and the meaning can only be seen as different aspects of a single event. Hall claims that human interaction, on the broad level, can be divided into low-context and high-context communication systems. (Xu Lisheng 110)

3. Differences in Cultural Values Reflected in Chinese and American Advertising

3.1 Differences in power distance

Power distance deals with the extent to members of a society generally accept and expect unequal distribution of power in organizations, institutes and society. Power distance is one of the five dimensions on which cultures differ. This cultural dimension describes how individuals within a society view power and, consequently, their role in decision making (Charles Mitchell 16). It indicates the extent to which a society accepts the fact that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally among individuals（Hofstede 1991） Hofstede thought that power distance is concerned about the equal problem among individuals. In all levels in society, such as family, school, and company, power distance does exist. And it’s together with graded system. Because of many factors, there are power distance differences between two countries and the difference is reflected by power distance index. In high power distance society with large power distance index, people tend to accept the graded system and always show their respect for the people on a higher position who enjoy more privilege and seem to be a God-like figure. People in such a society, like Chinese, stress the individual position differences and they are willing to accept such kind of unbalanced power delegation; while people in low power distance society, like Americans, strike for equality. Individualism takes up a great part of their social values. They work together to minimize power and status differences. People who live in low power-distance cultures are freer to display emotions to individuals with different social status, because status differences are small. (Richard L. Wiseman and Pan 308)

“Dear, marry him now once you meet a cook from New East” (An Hui New East Cuisine School)“姐，遇到新东方厨师，你就嫁了吧”（安微新东方烹饪学校）

From these advertisements as mentioned, it can be seen that China is a high power distance country, it pay attention to people and want to respect human, in the other word, it stresses the individual position. “姐，遇到新东方厨师，你就嫁了吧”，this advertisement means that you can trust the cooks from Xin Dongfang. And it is obvious that the cook is a hot occupation and lots of female want to marry him. Therefore China is a high power distance country.

“The choice of a new generation” (Fanta)

“For those who do” (Lenovo)

However, “The choice of a new generation” emphasizes the individualism. “For those who do” (Lenovo). This advertisement is made for Western countries where people pursue the individualism. It conveys this message that people can use the Lenovo Computer to deal with things like a swift actor. Competition rather than cooperation is encouraged; individual goals are more important than group goals, allowing individual interests to prevail over the interests of the collective; people put more value on individual performance than group harmony when there is conflict between the two. Collectivism is characterized by a rigid social framework that distinguishes between in-groups and out-groups. A “we” consciousness prevails: People’s identity is based on the social system; individuals have strong loyalty to the groups they belong to; individuals are dependent on organizations and institutions. In addition, collectivism emphasizes that group’s welfare takes priority to personal interests. Among Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions, individualism versus collectivism is perhaps the most basic and central dimension of cultural variability identified by theories across disciplines to explain similarities and differences in social behavior and cultures. Many scholars engaged in cross-cultural studies have applied this dimension to their studies, indicating that most Western countries are more individualistic than Asian countries.

剩余内容已隐藏，请支付后下载全文，论文总字数：35483字