2.3.4 Euphemism and Taboo

Euphemism and taboo are common cultural phenomena. Euphemism and taboo are formed in special cultural atmosphere. They involve language and action, including death, hell, fertility and so on. For example, both Chinese and westerns people try to avoid using the word “die”. Chinese often use “亡故,谢世,与世长辞” instead of “die” and English people would like to use “take a trip to heaven” “be with god” or “go to a better world” instead of “die”. This shows people’s attitude to death. In China, people always talk about everything. In foreign countries, people emphasize the personality, and privacy is considered as sacrosanct, such as age, income, religion and marriage and so on. Euphemism and taboo are inseparable. In English, there are many taboo vocabularies. So in social communication foreigners do not talk with taboo vocabularies. So people use the euphemism. Such as in western schools the students with “poor grades” are called “below average students” rather than “poor students”.

III. Teaching Objectives of Cultural Infiltration

3.1 Cross-cultural Communication

According to English curriculum standers, cross-cultural communication needs people to understand many things, and there are many demands for students to understand culture. The first level is the ability to master and use a foreign language. That is, students must have language skills, including grammatical and discourse skills. The second level is that they need to recognize and respect the differences between different cultures, and people should understand different cultures. Students need to have a higher level of language skills, including language skills and social and cultural language skills. The third level is that people strategically deal with the variety of problems and obstacles in cross-cultural communication. The highest level is that they through appropriate and effective cross-cultural communication behavior enhance their own cultural literacy and personality charm, and enrich their own life experience and the value of life. Teaching objectives of cross-cultural language is to improve the language skills, cultural skills and cultural communication. The cross-cultural communication is of vital importance for both teachers and students to create common emotional reaction, further eliminating the cultural centralism. First and foremost, the common emotion can be defined as figuring others’ experience and having a emotional resonance with them. The reason why it is extremely difficult for people from different cultural background to communicate is that they have a completely different understanding towards similar cultural phenomenon. In the cross-cultural communication, once reducing sympathy, teachers could not know and evaluate their students’ value correctly. One of major reasons leading to unsuccessful communication is short of common cultural background. To accept the cultural differences should be given priority in the process of developing common emotion. In addition, teachers are supposed to put themselves in students’ place to understand this cultural phenomenon. They should have no discrimination against other culture. Instead, they realize and tolerate different cultures in an impartial and comprehensive way. Secondly, it is of great benefit to develop two-way communication. Communication is a circular and interactive process, which covers information senders, receivers and information itself. Due to cultural differences, the communication process is inevitably tinged with somewhat of disharmony in such respects as values, religious belief, customs and so on. Therefore, two-way communication is helpful to recognize various cultural background. At the same time, it can improve students’ enthusiasm about cross-cultural communication, expand the way of communication as well as generalize and popularize the successful experience in exchanging with people. Last but not least, it can strengthen their ability of communication. Under the exam-oriented education, not few students pay much attention to the book knowledge, ignoring the practical use. Thus what they have learned in the classroom seriously disjoints with the outside world. Through cross-cultural communication they can put the new knowledge into practice, realizing the ultimate aim of teaching.