Cross-Cultural Blunders in Professional Communication from a Semantic Perspective

Cross-cultural blunders caused by inappropriate use of language are a common problem in international professional communication. They cause misunderstanding, lead to business failures, and tend to be offensive at times. Such blunders may occur in business ads, slogans, products names, and instructions. Understanding their causes and finding solutions to them are of importance in international professional communication. By examining specific cases, the article analyzes the causes that lead to such blunders from a semantic perspective and concludes that indiscriminate use of the semantic meaning of a word, a lexical form, lexical sound, numbers, color words, and animal names of the target language is the major cause of causing cultural blunders in international professional communication. Along the way, the article also offers solutions to the problems identified.