Through the study of mine, the paper aims at leading readers to a deeper understanding of the definition of privacy and then to compare the different aspects of privacy in Western countries and China in politeness, salary, space and age as well as present some proper examples to support the opinions. After that, the paper will analyze two reasons from the aspects of history and cultural values in Western countries and in China. The conclusive part summarizes the content of whole paper. At the same time, it puts forward some good suggestions for the lubrication of intercultural communication involved in privacy issue.
2. Literature Review
Nowadays with the process of cultural globalization, people pay more and more attention to the issue of privacy.
Many efforts and achievements have been done by consulting data from Journal Net, outstanding master’s thesis network and other many materials such as the journal of higher education research, but there are few systemic researches about the aspects of privacy and factors of privacy between China and Western countries.
In The Comparative Study of Privacy between China and Western Countries (《中西隐私观比较研究》)mainly redacted by Cheng Hongbo in 2008, Professor Cheng analyzed the main and the fundamental reasons which resulted in the cultural differences between China and Western countries. A series of examples were also added to support his ideas. What is not perfect in this paper is that Professor Cheng did not mention any different aspects of privacy between China and Western Countries. And he did not pay more attention to some other reasons which could also result in the cultural differences.
In Differences between China and the Western Concept of Privacy (《浅析中西方隐私观的差异》)written by Zhou Hui published in 2009 in Journal of Changchun University of Science and Technology (Higher Education Edition), she showed some differences of privacy between China and Western Countries, different concepts of privacy in China and Western countries and the main cause (Inpidualism and Collectivism). Although she made the research more systematically than some other researchers, some examples should also be followed by the different aspects of privacy so as to support that and so was the historical reason. Only in the way, the paper would be more perfect. 源:自'751.·论,文;网·www.751com.cn/
Through the studies existed in this field, most authors have analyzed the differences, and obtained the reasons of different privacy which are inpidualism in western countries and collectivism in China. But the fact is that some authors just listed the differences simply but without examples, or just analyzed from some certain perspectives. Even if they have done this, the previous scholars have not analyzed the comparative perspectives of privacy. The paper will make a further study on the different aspects of privacy between China and Western countries and analyze the two reasons resulting in the differences of privacy in the context of intercultural communication systematically.