Acomparative Study of the Connotations of Plant Words in English and Chinese Languages

Language is the vehicle of culture, and vocabulary is the most active part of a language. Both Chinese and English are rich in the words denoting different plants. Associative meanings of these words, however, arouse more interest than their lexicall meanings due to the discrepancy between the two languages deriving from the differences of the speakers' cultural backgrounds, social customs, and aesthetic interests. Employing contrastive analysis on the two cultures where in the two languages are nourished, this paper has made a series of contrasts between and explorations on the connotation in the two languages, and reveals the relevant social and cultural psychology and its influences on the crosscultural communication.