5.2cultural connotation of words

Hello everyone. Today we are going to talk about cultural connotation of words. Have you ever heard of the Parker Pen Company? I bet you have. Let me tell you a short story about that company first. Many years ago, the Parker Pen Company marketed bottled ink called SuperQunik. It’s ads said: “To avoid embarrassment, use Parker SuperQunik.” In American English, to be “embarrassed” is to feel somewhat uncomfortable, but to Spanish-speakers, to be “embarassada” also means to be pregnant. This ads was, however, decoded into “To avoid pregnancy, use Parker SuperQunik.” by many people in Mexico.

What can we learn from this story? Yes. We can’t always understand words with their literal meanings. Same words may have different meanings in different cultures. Here is another example: “friend” can be translated into “amigo” in Spanish. In American culture, a friend maybe someone you are familiar with. In Spanish and Mexican culture, however, an “amigo” should be someone really close and one that you can count on.

How can we use and understand a word properly in intercultural communication? We need to learn about cultural connotation of words. And this is our learning objective today.

What is connotation? While people invent words to describe their world, they often create more than one meaning for a word. When we use a word, sometimes we use its literal meaning, or the basic meaning. That is called the denotation of words. Yet sometimes we use the implied or figural meaning. And that is called the “connotation” of a word. Connotations are often closely related to the culture they are rooted in.

Sometimes, same words have similar connotations in different languages. Sometimes, same words have different connotations in different languages. And in other cases, one word may have connotations in one language but none in other languages. In order to better understand cultural connotations of words, let’s take the example of connotations in Chinese and English languages. Here we use “c” to represent “connotation” and capitalized “C” and “E” for Chinese and English. And we will explain the phenomenon based on the four situations listed in this chart.

1. cC=cE

In the first situation, the words in both cultures share the same meaning and won’t cause any misunderstandings. They have similar connotations. “Fox” in both eastern and western culture has the same connotation of being cunning and we both consider “pigs” as lazy animals. Other shared expressions in both Chinese and English like: Walls have ears. (隔墙有耳); Spread money like water. (花钱如流水); Man proposes, God disposes. (谋事在人，成事在天); Castle in the air (空中楼阁)，and so on.

2. cC≠cE

In the second situation, the words have different connotations in different cultures. Connotations of different colors are the most cited examples here. As we all know, red signifies celebrations of holidays and weddings in China while it is often associated with blood and violence in western culture. White is the representing color of funerals in traditional Chinese culture. Yet it is considered pure by the westerners and is the traditional color for the weddings.

Now look at the following Chinese phrases please. How do you translate them into English. Ok, Brown sugar; black tea; green-eyed; blue chips; Black sheep and pornography.

Is your answer right?

Not only colors, some animals also contain different connotations. Unlike fox and pig, we perceive the very common animal, dog, in quite different ways. To Westerners, the word “dog”, is associated with the best friends of mankind. It’s not

offending to call someone “lucky dog”, “top dog”, “gay dog”, and it is usually used to describe everyday life and behavior, as in “Love me, love my dog”, “Every dog has its day”. But in Chinese culture, we associates a not-so-friendly image with the character “狗”. In China, we often use such expressions as “狗东西”, “狗仗人势”, “狼心狗肺” , “狗胆包天”to describe unrespectable and disgraceful people.

Dragon is an imaginary creature. In Chinese culture \"dragon\" symbolizes wealth and power. We Chinese people call ourselves as descendants of dragon. Parents hope their children can be useful and have a bright future like a dragon or a phoenix when they grow up. On the contrary, dragon is a derogatory term in English. In their culture, the dragon is “a mythical monster”.

cC=0, cE≠0

In this third situation, words and expressions carry cultural connotation in Chinese language but not in English.

Pine, bamboo and plum are called “岁寒三友” in Chinese. Because of their ability to survive and sometimes even blossom in tough environment, they symbolize dauntless quality for Chinese people, yet these words have no special connotations to westerners, they are just three ordinary plants.

More than that, Numbers also contain a wide range of cultural connotations. Ancient Chinese people believed that all numbers began with one and ended with nine. Nine is considered as the symbol of many, long, and good luck. The multiples of nine repeated appear in legends of our heroes, like in “三十六计”, “七十二变”，”一百单八将”, etc. And in the past a few decades, some Chinese have began to give numbers

new connotations based on some homophonic words. Four is associated with death while eight stands for fortune.

cC≠0, cE=0

And of course there are some usages exist only in English but not in Chinese. As westerners are wondering about our obsession with numbers, they, at the same time, still have their own superstitious fear about what might happen on a Friday the 13th. And when somebody calls his cellphone a lemon, do you know why? Or when somebody’s gone bananas? What’s wrong with those fruits?

Ok. Today we have learned that words have both literal meanings and connotative meanings. Many connotations of words are culture-related. So in different cultures, same words may lead to different associations. In the process of intercultural-communication, it’s essential that we pay special attention to those words.

Now this is our critical thinking question for today: Read the following quotation from Hong LouMeng carefully and try to translate it into English.

Thank you for listening and have a good day!