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Effective communication strategies are essential for people to initiate,maintain,and develop harmonious and intimate intercultural friendships.Since cultures do not talk to each other;individuals do.In that sense,success or failure in interpersonal communication will inevitably lead to understanding and appreciation or misunderstanding and even confrontation of the communicators involved.This is especially true in intercultural communication in which the message producer and the message receiver are from different cultural backgrounds and therefore not sharing the same encoding and decoding systems.As one of the most important and fundamental types of interpersonal relationships for all inhabitants in this"global village,"friendship plays an indispensable role in the lives of all human beings.Hardly can anyone live a happy and successful life without friendships,and it is not exaggerating to say that the status of ones friendship relations can be the clearest indicator of the quality of his communication and hence the quality of his life.Being the two most influential representatives of all nations in the East and West,China and America serve as good examples for the study of intercultural friendships.Chinese people might create intimate friendships or meet severe confrontations with their American counterparts in their interactions,and therefore the study of effective communication and communication strategies is of vital importance in this concern.Research has shown that although there do exist certain commonalities,the ways of making friends and developing friendships in these two cultures also differ significantly due to the sharp differences in their philosophical and ideological foundations.First,the collectivistic and interdependent nature characterizes the Chinese type of friendships,and the individualistic and independent nature is typical of the American type of friendships.Second,the Confucian ethical values have exerted great influence on the Chinese,while the philosophical views of pragmatism and egalitarianism have made a tremendous impact upon the Americans.Based on a brief analysis of the predominant Chinese and American cultural values and principles that guide the development of friendships,this thesis compares and contrasts the distinctive features of the ways of making friends in the two countries and tries to provide some practical linguistic,psychological,and ideological strategies for people from the two cultures to better understand each others communicative styles and thus avoid communication breakdowns in order to enjoy more productive intercultural friendships.