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The thesis makes a contrastive analysis on Chinese and Western privacy, hopes that would be beneficial to improve cross-culture communication in future. Firstly, it makes a clear definition of culture and privacy, analyses the relationship between them; Secondly, states their reflections in different aspects; Thirdly, it makes a analysis on the causes,i.e. collectivism and inpidualism, and another aspect about the regulation system of privacy; Finally, the conclusion: privacy plays an adjunctive role in intercultural communication. The aim of this article is improving people’s intercultural communication competence and avoiding some possible communication failures caused by different privacy.
II. Privacy in Different Cultures
Each country has its own culture and there are many differences between different countries in culture, such as values and beliefs, marriage and privacy, etc. Privacy is also a cultural phenomenon, constrained by nationalist, history, culture, etc. The comprehension and protection of privacy is differ from country to country under different cultures. In order to avoid trouble in cultural communication, we need to have a comprehensive knowledge about the privacy. At the beginning of this section, we are concentrated mainly on culture.
2.1 Definition of Culture
It is evident that there a special connection between culture and privacy. If we want to know more, it is necessary for us to know the definition of culture, privacy and the concrete relationship between them. But the first is how to define the culture, it is a matter. If we can not set out this definition clearly, we may mistake some meanings of communications between different cultures. In fact, culture is invisible and pervasive and it is one of the most favored vocabularies of man. The word “culture” has been used in almost every human society. Culture is difficult to define．Almost everyone has a definition of culture. As someone say, culture is the total accumulation beliefs, values, behaviors, institutions and communication patterns, that are shared, learned and passed down through the generations in the identifiable group of people. Porter & Samover(19)note that “culture manifests itself in patterns of language and in forms of acting and behavior that act as models for both the common adaptive acts and the styles of communication that enable people to live in a society within a given geographic environment at a given state of technical development at a particular moment in time．
Another one, Liang Shuming (166-178), a famous Chinese philosopher and thinker, who made great contributions to comparative studies of Eastern and Western cultures, discusses three aspects of culture in his famous books Culture and Philosophy in the East and West. The first is the material life at the superficial layer, such as all material things essential for human survivals; the second is the social life at the intermediate layer, such as lifestyle, social organizations, political and economic relations; the third is the spiritual life at the most inner part, such as religion, philosophy, value systems, science and art. The above three aspects of cultures can also be termed as the physical culture at the surface, the conventional culture at the intermediate layer, and the psychological culture at the deepest layer.
Generally speaking, Culture is the all and the one which consist by social behavior, art, beliefs, customs transmission through society conduct and all other products of human work and thinking. May be we can list some characteristics of culture:
1. Culture is social heritage which has been formed in a long period of time and keeps evolving;
2. Culture includes not only beliefs, values, customs, knowledge, but also concrete objects and tools;
3. Culture is the guide of people’s act, and provides reference for the problems they encounter;
4. Culture is not innate, but acquired after birth instead;