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written by a wise and famous teacher who seeks to enlighten students with her great knowledge because of her love of Chinese cultures.
Apart from all the opinions at abroad mentioned above, there are still lots of distinctive views about privacy at home. The book Intercultural Communication-Covert Culture in the Foreign Language and Literature by Gu Jiazu, published in 2000, is considered as the breakthrough in intercultural communication. It is divided into seven parts, which mainly concludes the content of public culture and hidden culture as well as the ways of covert culture’s exposition. An overview of both macro and micro theory is used to observe the different cultures from the multi-angle and the multi-level. The aspects of language and culture, literature and culture, translation and culture and education and culture are all mentioned in this book. Proceeding from China’s national conditions, the book gives readers some new inspiration of cross-cultural communication at the level of both theory and practice.
In “Comparison of Privacy View of China and America” in Journal of Anhui Vocational College of Police Officers in January, 2004, Yuan Zicong pays much attention to the comparison of the cultural concept of privacy between Chinese and Americans and gives a brief analysis of the reasons for it. Besides, the legal definition of privacy is also involved. In the article, Robert Smith, the issuer of Privacy magazine states that: early in the North American continent and the British colony, the Americans have already been aware of the need to engage with privacy, and later they pay more emphasis on privacy so as to seek religious freedom. Robert Smith adds that it stems from the distrust of government that Americans stress privacy so much.
In “Cultural Differences Reflected by Privacy of Chinese and American” in Journal of Cultural Research in 2006, Li Hongtao and Liu Lingling give us a view that mutual respect for private rights is the premise of cultural communication. This article explores the cultural differences of the privacy between Chinese and westerners from the view of language and culture. In English, some of the words are often used to describe the people who like to inquire about the private affairs of others: “Poke into other people’s business”, “meddle in other people’s affairs”, “keep your nose out of our business” and “put not your hand between the bark and the tree”. All these are showing that westerners are with particular emphasis on the protection of personal lives. While, the rules of traditional Chinese culture on privacy are not that obvious.
In the article “On the Difference Between Oriental and Western’s Privacy” in Journal of Heilongjiang College of Education in 2007, Shang Yunhe claims that Chinese have consistently opposed the concept of “privacy”. In China, individual rights are regarded as self-interest, so there
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is no concept of private rights. In the traditional Chinese culture, individualism is a derogatory term. However, in the western culture, individualism and self-interest are not exactly equal. Individualism is a product of democracy and every single man has an equal status to expand development.
In “On the Concept of Privacy in China and the West” in Journal of Jiangsu Polytechnic University in June, 2007, Cai Fang points out that privacy exists in every culture. In different cultures, people’s concept of privacy greatly differs. Collectivism-oriented Chinese attach much importance to group privacy while individual privacy is neglected. In contrast, individualism-oriented westerners consider individual privacy to be more significant. Private time, private space and private rights are what they are tempted to protect.
In “On Privacy and Intercultural Communication” by Zhai Shilei and Li Hao in Journal of Dalian University in October, 2007, Zhai and Li discuss that privacy, as a value and psychological concept, has been given different understandings in different cultures. In the traditional sense, the Chinese people usually protect their own privacy through the physical form, such as walls and fences to cut off with the outside world. In western society, privacy is an individual state of mind, it is the recognition and protection starting from the perspective of human rights and individualism.
In “Exploration of the Differences Between Western and Chinese Concept of Privacy and Their Causes” by Cui Suhua in Social Sciences Journal of Colleges of Shanxi in January, 2009, the author maintains that Chinese and westerners hold different values due to the background differences, and thus the understanding of the scope of privacy is not the same which inevitably results in conflict in international exchanges. Westerners emphasize much on privacy, the investigation conducted by Wall Street Journal and NBC in 1999 shows that privacy is the greatest concern of Americans in the 2lst century. While to the Chinese, the individual is subordinate to the collective, everyone should obey the social ethics in order to achieve collective solidarity. In her article “The Privacy Difference in the Communication Between Chinese and American” in Theory Research in June, 2010, Zhang Yue-e offers an introduction of privacy and its classification. Through the analysis of the causes and future trends of the different privacy concepts, the author comes to the conclusion: different cultures contact and collide with each other under the trend of globalization. From the deep level, economy is the constituent behind this cultural phenomenon, that is to say, the development and changes of privacy are inextricably linked with the economy.
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Based on the study of the provided reports, essays and journals, national or international, this thesis concentrates on analyzing the different attitudes of privacy from three aspects: the different orientations of privacy, the different manifestations of privacy and the different protections of privacy. In order to examine these research questions more effectively, I would like to adopt an explanatory, classificatory, summary comparison way of discussion for this thesis. This analysis will provide an effective way to readers and foreign language learners to know the different attitudes towards privacy better, so that they can carry out cross-cultural communication successfully.
Chapter One Different Orientations of Privacy
Every society has its own traditional values. In the system of values, collectivism and individualism are separately the core understanding of Chinese and western cultures. Many cultural phenomena are rooted in the different conceptions of collectivism and individualism, without exception in privacy. This chapter mainly analyzes the different orientations of privacy between China and western countries.
1.1 Collective Privacy in China
Collectivism, as the core of Chinese values, is defined as the ideological concept that everything from the collective, collective interests above personal interests. It stresses the obligation and responsibility of the individual to the collective and it highlights that collective interest goes first and the individual interest should submit to the collective interest.
Judging from the earlier economic forms, the small-scaled agriculture is China’s traditional economic pattern whose main characteristics are family labor and small-scaled operators. Self-sufficiency of natural economy makes farming and cottage industries combine within the family. And the farmers must unite to resist the instruction of natural disasters and man-made forces in order to survive. It can be said that small-scaled agriculture formed the group-based awareness of the Chinese people, such a group-based awareness lay a profound influence on Chinese culture. Thus, you can understand why Chinese people value the group will and neglect the personal privacy.
In the opinion of Chinese traditional social structure, family is the basic unit of the
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composition of the country, individuals need to be attached to the family to survive. Kinship and clan relations are the existence that traditional Chinese people have to pay attention to. The individual is valuable just because he is part of the group and his fate and interests are all decided by groups. According to Xu Xingyan, “Chinese traditional culture is to ignore the people’s individual value. The essence of the personality perfection is precisely the suppression and sacrifice of people’s individual needs and personality, in order to achieve the maintenance of group orders.”1 From this we can see that Chinese culture is the culture of an obligation, people in his family network and social structural relationships needs to do the behavior consistent with his role and identity. So, Chinese people usually spend their mind on the maintenance of group privacy because that they live in groups and to protect the privacy of groups is also to protect their own privacy.
From the ideological point of view, Chinese culture is based on Confucianism, which is founded by Confucius, aims to safeguard national stability and social harmony, and advocates the establishment of a kind of collectivism that emphasizes the collective interest above individual interest. Under the influence of Confucianism, the stability and harmony of the groups are the purpose of Chinese, members of society should confess allegiance to the group through improving the moral and enhancing the ideological realm. In modern China, people have strong sense of community and belonging on collective, Chinese advocate that everyone should put the families’, society’s and countries’ interest at the first place. The community generally agrees that the maintenance of the whole society’s benefit is the value of the personal life, and the individualistic wish should obey countries’. Thousands of years’ history of the nation identifies this notion as social spirit, the inevitable consequence of which is that people express concern about the other people’s affair in the community as their own to care about, and do not think that is a violation of personal privacy.
1.2 Individual Privacy in Western Countries
Individualism, as the core value of western countries, is defined as to promote the free movement of persons and faith completely free theory, including self-motivation, self-choice, self-reliance, respect others, individual freedom and respect for privacy.
The birthplace of western civilization is in Europe, and the beginning of European civilization is in ancient Greek whose center of civilization is the Mediterranean region. The special natural conditions lead to the undeveloped agricultural economy, at the same time, the very convenient waterway traffic presents its advantage, so the development of industry and commerce
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is quickly stimulated. Westerners begin to get their material condition of existence through commercial exchange. And in the process of commercial exchanges, they not only get the tribal survival substances but also find the value and significance of individuals in business dealings. The strength and wisdom of the individual person get more and more emphasized in the ocean trade and the struggle between man and the sea. What’s more, with the rise of the industrial and commercial sectors, the commercial principles based on equal exchange promote the appearance of individual consciousness, thus westerners cultivate the cultural spirit of individualism. From this point of view, we can understand why westerners focus on individuals and personal privacy at such a large degree.
Under the influence of the marine culture, westerners insist that the survival and development of individuals are decided by their own. In their minds, families and individuals are just a temporary relationship, family members emphasize personal freedom, right and the sense of independence and dilute personal responsibility and obligation of the family. In the ownership of property, they follow the principle that cohabitation but separate wealth, so that father and son, husband and wife have their own private property which is protected by law. Thus, the value of equality and the dignity of the individual family members are able to be recognized.
Besides, Christian culture educate people to abandon the family obligation and burden the religious obligation. Renaissance and religious revolution certainly establish the values and the personal dignity of individuals. Enlightenment of the 18th century finalizes the natural rights in a legal form and the 20th century existentialist philosophy which focuses on life stresses that each person must be responsible for their own choice. So far, the ideological worldview of individualism in western culture developes to the extreme. Western culture is a culture of entitlement, “According to the classical natural law, right is regarded as personal inherent moral qualities and has an inalienable nature. This right concept establishes a personal image independent of groups and others.”2 Therefore, westerners decide their own proper lifestyle without any interference and this strong tendency to individualism leads them to emphasize so much on personal privacy.
To sum up, since collectivism and individualism are separately the core value of Chinese and western cultures, they have deeply penetrated in all kinds of lifestyles and all walks of life. What one thinks, says and does are consciously or unconsciously denoting the influence of them. So, the understanding of collectivism and individualism is crucial for studying the different attitudes of privacy between China and western countries.
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