文 献 综 述（A comparative Study of Privacy in the Chinese and American cultures (中美隐私观的差异)）

1. Introduction

This paper is dedicated to analyze differences of Privacy in the Chinese and American Cultures. By analyzing the differences of privacy between China and the America, readers and foreign language learners can improve their ability to carry out communication among cultures in order to avoid the contradictions and conflicts in intercultural communication.

1.1 Research background

Against the backdrop of globalization and the rapid development of information and technology, intercultural communication is growing increasingly important in our society. It is an indispensible skill for every Chinese individual communicating with foreigners. To reduce the misunderstanding, successful communication is rather important. Thus, we must enhance our ability of intercultural communication. However, the existing language study is not sufficient to support the successful communication; many people do not know taboo topics and relevant skills, especially when communicating with cross-cultural friends, which cause many problems to both our daily life and our work. As a result, the more frequent intercultural communication we have, the more contractions and conflicts we have to be confronted with. At the same time, cultivation of intercultural communicative competence becomes more and more important for people in the process of globalization. Human communication exists in certain physical environment and cognitive environment. Even though there are many factors influencing on human communication, privacy is a very important factor in the cognitive environment, which influences people's intercultural communication directly or indirectly, and its importance can not be ignored.

1.2 Need for the study

Nowadays, the exchange and cooperation between China and the US in economy, culture, and society have become increasingly frequent, which has required people in the two countries to develop mutual understandings concerning two languages. Meanwhile, people are also required to deepen their understandings in two cultures. Thus, the comparative study of privacy in Chinese and American

cultures is very necessary and practical in intercultural communication between the two countries.

2. Literature review