Abstract:

Dating advertisements mean that people would like to find their spouses  through the advertisements in the newspapers, magazines or some other media. It is a kind of advertisements. On the one hand, dating advertisements can reflect people’s different views of their standards of choosing a spouse. On the other hand, dating advertisements can also illustrate different cultural values. This thesis is intended to make a comparative study of Chinese and English dating advertisements. To begin with, the paper intends to make a comparative study of Chinese and English dating advertisements in terms of contents, including physiological conditions, spiritual life conditions and material conditions. Then, it makes a detailed analysis of different cultures contained in Chinese and English dating advertisements. Through the comparative study of the topic, we can know better about the cultural differences  between Chinese and English dating advertisements. At the same time, it can also help us understand more thoroughly about Chinese and westerners’ different values and different views of marriage.

Key words: Chinese and English dating advertisements; cultural differences; comparative study

摘要：

征婚广告是指人们通过报纸、杂志等媒体发布个人信息，寻求伴侣的一种广告方式。征婚广告一方面能反映人们对择偶标准的不同观点；另一方面，它还能折射出不同的文化价值观。本文试图对中英征婚广告作一比较研究。文章首先就中英征婚广告的内容，包括如生理条件，精神生活条件，物质条件等内容作一比较研究；其次，对中英征婚广告所蕴含的不同文化作了详细的分析。通过对这一课题的研究，使我们能更好地了解中西方在征婚广告方面的文化差异，同时也使我们对中西方人们不同的价值观、婚姻观有了更透彻的理解。

关键词：中英征婚广告；文化差异；比较研究

Introduction
With the development of the science and technology, people get more and more stress from their work and fierce competition, and their social circle becomes narrower and narrower. Under this situation, dating advertisements provide a good way to relieve their stress and expand their social circle, so dating advertisements have become a part of people’s daily life. The form of dating advertisements is various, such as newspaper dating, TV dating, online dating and so on. In recent years, some TV dating shows have become very popular. For instance, “If you are the one” .It shows us that choosing a spouse has become a heated topic. And the problem of leftover women and leftover men have aroused the social’s attention. What’s more, dating advertisement is a kind of culture. Different advertisements can reflect different cultures. It’s quite natural that there are many differences between Chinese and English dating advertisements. On the one hand, we can find that there are differences between Chinese and English dating advertisements in terms of contents. Many scholars have already made some studies in this prospect.