文化价值是语言使用的核心，语言使用是文化价值的载体，文化价值通过语言传播形成一定的类型。语言的文化将影响人们使用语言的思维和文化价值，这将反映在共同的交流中。社会心理学专家霍夫施泰德提出，是文化价值研究领域中最具影响力的理论之一，有着广泛的存在。由于他最初的工作和工作相关的研究，霍夫斯泰德统计了四个不同的文化维度，即权力距离、不确定性规避、个人主义与集体主义、男性气质和女性气质。20世纪70年代以来，通过统计分析，他对四十多个国家进行了个人主义、权力距离、不确定性规避、男子气概和长期取向的评价，分析了各个国家的文化价值观。跨文化研究的基石，已被世界各地的专家学者广泛采用。他们发展了他的理论，进行跨国文化差异进一步研究。
1 Introduction
1.1 Research background
Cultural value is the core in language use, while language use is the carrier of cultural value.Cultural value is formed into a certain type via language spreading. Culture that languagecarries would have an effect on thinking and cultural values of people using that languagedaily and it will be reflected in common communication (Whorf, 1956).The well-known Culture Dimension Theory (also known as the theory of culturalcharacteristics of the human population), which is put forward by the social psychologistGeert Hofstede(1980,1991), is one of the most influential theories in the domain of culturalvalues researches and it has a very wide range of existence. Due to his initial work and work-related research, Hofstede statistically assembled four different cultural dimensions, which ispower distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism vs. collectivism, and masculinity andfemininity. Since 1970s, through statistical analyses, he has been engaged in the ratings ofmore than forty countries on individualism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance,masculinity, and long-term orientation to analyze cultural values of each country.Hofstede’s Culture Dimension Theory has marked the cornerstone of cross-culture study,which has been widely adopted by experts and scholars all over the world. They havedeveloped his theory to conduct further studies on multinational culture differences.In China, Hofstede’s Culture Dimension Theory has earned quite a few fans, which hasturned it more and more popular. These studies promote the ideas and perceptions of deepglobalization in full scale and help the theory to go further.
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1.2 Research motivations
The author identified that power distance has always been researched in the businesscontext, namely multinational companies, groups and organizations to help improve themanagement and operation. “In practice, no society has ever obtained equality in the form ofcomplete consistency among different areas of rank (Hofstede, 1991:81).” This sentencemeans that power distance widely exists among the relationship that went with inequality,especially in China, which has been affected by feudalism for such a long time. Besidesbusiness domain, classroom teaching, including teachers and students, have attracted theauthor’s attention as another inequality relation.As college English teaching in China has become more and more influential andindispensible to the cultivation of students’communicative competence, an increasing numberof native-English teachers (foreign teachers) have begun to participate in China’s collegeEnglish teaching. Due to the key function of foreign language teaching method in teachingfield could not be verified, many scholars and experts have turned their studies to the processof classroom teaching (All Wright, 1988; Ellis, 1990, 1994, 1999; Chaudron, 1986, 1988).Therefore, the author decided to conduct a comparative research of the power distancebetween foreign English teachers and Chinese English teachers.Research on power distance can make comparison about culture backgrounds between thistwo teacher groups. Besides self-understanding awareness, it further promotes classroomcommunication and balances the classroom teaching methods. Power distance, as animportant cultural value and one of the key dimensions to measure classroom interaction andcorrelation, will promote the improvement of teachers’ communication strategies andcommunication behaviors.
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2. Theoretical framework and literature review
2.1 Theoretical framework: power distance
Power distance, as one of the key member in culture dimensions, has been developed by agreat deal of schola
