Abstract:

Although daily greetings are very simple expressions, they are used to show respect to others when meeting together. Also, the purpose of daily greetings is to establish or maintain social communication or social interaction, not to transfer any information, so formulaic expressions are often used in both English and Chinese. However, Chinese daily greetings have their own features and meaningfulness. This paper started with the introduction of Chinese history and culture, especially Chinese daily greetings which play an unique role during intercultural interaction and communication, takes a British friend’s story as a case, and then discusses the relationship between language and culture, and culture and intercultural communication. The paper highlights that the factors of language and culture influence on daily greetings and gives four suggestions of how to acquire intercultural awareness, how to properly use daily greetings, how to adapt to a new culture and how to impr...