Abstract—As terms that do not have practical meaning but
can fully express the speaker’s emotion and attitude, pet
phrases are widely used in our daily life. While it is hard for us
to realize its important role in communication due to its
frequent use. As two distinct languages, pet phrases in Chinese
and English have quite diverse origins. Therefore, this article
will take several typical characteristics as examples and attempt
to analyze the differences between Chinese and English in the
use of pet phrases and the main causes of such distinctions from
the perspective of sociolinguistics. The purpose of this study is
to eliminate misunderstandings caused by the pet phrases
between Chinese and English speakers so that both sides will
gain some insights into each other’s culture, avoid pragmatic
failure and achieve the goal of cross-cultural communication.
Index Terms—Cross-cultural communication, pet phrases,
sociolinguistic.
The authors are with Northwestern Polytechnical University, Shaanxi,
China (e-mail: 914650881@qq.com, 526266143@qq.com).
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Cite:Wu Jinrui and Tian Jianguo, "A Contrastive Analysis of Chinese and English Pet Phrases from the Perspective of Sociolinguistics," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 14-17, 2022.