In daily life, all sorts of colors can be seen everywhere and human cognition to sense the color is obviously in common。 Some of the basic color symbolism in Chinese and English language should be the same。 As westerners in extensive contacts and exchanges, we found that color words’ cultural connotation of the same color in Chinese and English language often have obvious differences。 In this paper, I’ll mainly discusses the cultural connotation of color words including six basic colors, white, black, red, green, yellow and blue in Chinese and English language by means of comparison。 To further understand the color words in different cultural background can help us communicate with others successfully。论文网
2。 Literature Review
The study on the differences between Chinese and English color words has a long history。 Many experts have carried on the thorough study of color words and form their own theory has been widely accepted in translation field。 These studies include the basic color words, color words and concepts, the pragmatic meaning of color words translation, social and cultural connotation of color words, and so on。 These books or articles have a detailed explanation on color words。
To a large extent，the culture of a nation affected the people's understanding of color。 There are a lot of researches at home and abroad。 They study color words in different ways and from different aspects。 In western countries, the color is very popular in philosophy, physics, psychology, art and so on。 Color terms in the history of the oldest theory is Aristotle's theory of black and white, color by hue, brightness and saturation。 At that period, all colors were considered as different degrees of mix of white and black。 Black and White Theory was ended by Newton who saw seven colors of the sunlight through prism。 Other theories appeared at the same time, such as Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and Cognitive Linguistics。 Although there are different between these theories, but they all admit color's role in English。
People have shown keen interest in color long ago。 Color vision of the early activities and color perception can be traced back to ancient times。 A obviously evidence for this claim is exist in Plato’s classic reasoning for perceiving colors, which has been “repeated with only slight variation for 2,500 years and carried into the physical sciences as a basic assumption about the nature of color” (Sloane 1991:168)。 From then on, the color has attracted a lot of attention in many fields, such as science, philosophy, anthropology, ethnology, sociology and linguistics。
In my paper, I mainly lay stress on some color words in Chinese and English。 We all know that there are many striking contrast of color words between Chinese and English languages。 For hundreds of years scholars have been working on that。 I'm very interested in this topic too。 Based on these great men, I wrote this article。 It mainly studies and explores the gap of culture and language between two related language。 In addition, this thesis also discusses why these color words can reflect different cultural connotation。
3。 Differences between English and Chinese in Color Words
3。1 White
In China, “白” is often linked to omen and funeral together。 If one’s relative died, his family want to set up a white mourning hall to express sadness。 “白” was alluded to as civilian color; ancient people dressed in “白” color were called “白衣平民”。 Sometimes, people use “白” to represent “in vain, priceless or without rewarding”, such as “百搭” , “白费” , “白吃” , “白干” and so on。 “白” also represents purity。 For example, “白衣天使” is a beautiful word for the doctor and is used to praise their purity, kindness and care。 颜色词的文化内涵在汉英语言中的对比研究(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_83356.html