2.Literature  Review

         Scholars from home and abroad have studied kinship terms in many ways and from various conceivable perspectives due to its great significance. According to research, the oldest existing Chinese dictionary Erya has already recorded about 200 words related to kinship terms.  In modern times, the study of kinship terms has been quite common. Fan(2011) studies the traditional kinship terms in Chinese through a novel named Dream of the Red Chamber.  Duan(2012) studies the kinship terms from the perspective of social linguistics. According to E. R. Leach, kinship terms “category words by means of which an inpidual is taught to recognize the significant groupings in the social structure into which he is born” (Leach,1958) Baker(1979) makes a contribution to the study of relations between family structures and kinship terms.  Scholars like them have provided us with a great deal of information concerning kinship terms in Chinese and English.  However, they don't have the combination. This motivates me to conduct this study. From the comparison of Chinese and English kinship terms, we can infer the reasons contributing to these differences. e.g. a traditional Chinese family would follow the hierarchical order, the gender order, and the generation order, while westerners advocates freedom, independence, and equality. Root causes are also listed in this study, in order to achieve a deeper understanding of cultural background e.g. I’ve noticed that several works have mentioned that Chinese kinship terms strictly follows the gender order. This reminds me of the five basic human relationships raised by Confucius, which indicates that wives should obey their husbands’ wishes. So I’ve made attempt to prove the cause&effect relations between Confucianism and the Chinese kinship terms. 

3. A Comparison between Kinship Terms in Chinese and English

If someone tells a Chinese that “Mary is Justin’s sister”, he can hardly tell whether  Mary is Justin’s “Jie Jie（姐姐）”(elder sister)or “Mei Mei（妹妹）”(younger sister) As you can see, some differences and misunderstandings do exist between kinship terms in Chinese and English. 

3. 1 Kinship terms in Chinese来!自~优尔论-文|网www.youerw.com

3. 1. 1 Categories of Chinese kinship terms

According to research,  over 1000 kinds of kinship terms were used in the Qing Dynasty. When it comes to the 20th century China, although the feudal patriarchal clan system no longer existed,  relatives and kinship still play  important roles in Chinese social network. To know the structures of kinship terms in Chinese, we should first be aware of the traditional Chinese  family structure, which is mainly pided by consanguinity and marriage. Kinship terms can be pided into 3 categories from a Chinese point of view: kinship terms used for lineal relations, kinship terms used for collateral relations, and kinship terms used for affinal relations.