英汉基本颜色词对比研究.doc

本 科 毕 业 论 文

A comparative study of English and Chinese basic color words
英汉基本色彩词的比较研究

2010 年 6 月
Acknowledgements

I am greatly in debt to a number of people, without whose help this thesis could not be completed. First of all, I must show my great gratitude to my supervisor Wu Ying, whose helpful suggestions have contributed greatly to the completion of this thesis. I owe her special thanks for providing me solid and abundant advice and instructions.
My sincere thanks should go to all the other teachers in the English department for their instructions and inspiring courses, which I took during my four-year study. These courses they gave really count a lot for this thesis.
Finally, I will express my thanks to my family who have shown patience and understanding in the entire period of this work. The biggest thanks must go to my parents who, though unable to support me theoretically, encourage me spiritually.
毕业论文外文摘要
A Comparative Study of Basic Color Terms in English and Chinese
Abstract: Language is the carrier of the culture. Color words, as a special classification in the language vocabulary system, which have striking characteristics and historical inheritance, not only make human language more ample and vivid, but also let us understand rich and hidden culture through them. Color terms in Chinese and English reflect physical property of the color as well as national marks, and develop accompanied by evolution of their own cultures．
It is well-known that the formation of the meaning of color words is the result of the effect of many elements such as culture, politics, folk-custom, production practice and religion. Moreover, these color words have been inherited from generation to generation and acquire their own cultural implications. The paper chooses the six basic color terms that are widely accepted by scholars to make a comparative analysis of cultural connotations of basic color terms in English and Chinese, and further confirms that connotations of color terms embody culture. Then, the features and the causes of connotations of basic color words can be drawn through the study. At last, the paper states the significance of knowing the connotations when we are dealing with cross-cultural communication and foreign language study.
Key words: basic color words; culture; cultural connotations; characteristics; cultural causes; functions

毕业论文中文摘要

英汉基本颜色词对比研究

摘 要：语言是文化的载体，颜色词，作为语言词汇系统中一个特殊的分类，有着它显著的特征和历史传承，不仅使人类的语言更加丰富、生动，而且通过它，我们可以了解颜色词背后所蕴含的丰富的各民族文化。因为颜色词汇不仅反映着颜色的物理属性，也折射出文化的属性，并随着文化的演变而演变。
众所周知，基本颜色词意义的形成是一个民族文化、政治、民俗、生产实践等多元化因素长期作用的结果，而且世代传承，并在此基础上逐渐形成各具特色的颜色文化内涵。本文主要分析探讨了汉英两种语言中六个基本颜色词的文化内涵差异，总结获知基本颜色词语义的特点，进而挖掘和分析造成词义内涵差异的文化成因，文章最后揭示了掌握英汉基本颜色词所传承的文化内涵在跨文化交际及外语学习等领域的重要意义。

关键词：基本颜色词；文化；文化内涵；特点；文化成因；意义

Contents

1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………1
2 Basic Color Terms and Colors of Culture…………………………………………1
2.1 Basic Color Terms……………………………………………...……………1
2.2 Colors and Cultures...…...……………………………………………………3
3 A Comparative Study of Cultural Connotations of Basic Color Words in Chinese and English……………………………………………………………………………4
4 Characteristics of Cultural Connotations of Basic Color Words………………….9
4.1 Multiple Meanings in Cultural Connotations….....……….…………………….9
4.2 Double Semantic Meanings…………………………………………………...9
4.3 The Reflection of Nationality in the Cultural Connotations………………10
4.4 The Characteristic of Changing with Time in the Cultural Connotations…….11
5 Main Reasons for Different Cultural Connotations between Chinese and English Color Words ……….…………………………………..………...…………………..11
5.1 Different Customs………………………………………...……………………11
5.2 The Influence of Historical Events …………………………………………….12
5.3 The Influence of Religion and Art……………………………………………..12
6 The Implication of Understanding the Cultural Connotations of Basic Color Words………………………………………………………………………………...13
6.1 Sensitiveness to Different Cultures………………………………...................14
6.2 Cultivation of Intercultural Communicative Competence……………………14
6.3 Eliminating the Cultural Blindness of Color Words in Foreign Language Learning……………………………………………………………………………....15
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………16
References……………………………………………………………………………17

Listing of Tables：

Table 1 Color/element/nature/orientation/season relationships…………………......3
Table 2 Double semantic meanings of the six basic color words…………………..1
淮海工学院二〇一〇届本科毕业论文 第 17 页 共 17 页
1. Introduction
Everything our eyes can perceive, the environment we are confronted with and surrounded by, the diversity of objects, be it natural or man-made and even human beings themselves is more or less marked by the appearance of color. Since color is that important, it is necessary for human beings to create color vocabulary to express. Therefore，there are great number of color terms recording color of the world; these color terms are often used in human language.
Culture, not only does determine how we see, observe, notice, and classify colors, but also with the development of technology, industry, and economy, influences the size of a color system. So many color terms of a particular language are to a considerable degree the product of culture. English and Chinese, as languages with a long history, are both rich in color terms to describe colors of nature. Furthermore, every nation has its own color outlook and people's color outlook is an important component part of culture outlook. In other words, different nation with different cultural backgrounds or people of the same nations with the same backgrounds but belonging to different social groups or social classes have different perceptions of various colors. They have the specific cultural information and the unique characters of national culture. Gradually, they are endowed with rich cultural connotations
Nevertheless, with the development of globalization and the intensified international contacts, learning cultures of different countries has become a necessity. As just have mentioned, color words in Chinese and English are influenced by the cultural development in their society. In order to express ourselves and communicate with each other freely and easily, we must learn the cultural connotations for color terms, which have been and are greatly influencing people's language and life. However, it is said that there are more than 4000 kinds of colors, so it can not be discussed for all. This article takes six basic color terms---- red, yellow, black, white, green and blue, as examples to compare the connotations of them in Chinese and English cultures.
This thesis consists of six parts: The first part is a prelude to the essay. In the second part, basic color terms and a theoretic framework about culture and language are presented. In the third part, a comparative study of cultural connotations of Chinese and English basic color words is discussed. In the fourth and fifth parts, through the preliminary analysis, it tries to conclude the characteristics and find out the cultural causes in their connotations. At last, it states the advantages of knowing the connotations when we are dealing with cross-cultural communication and foreign language study.
2 Basic Color Terms and Colors of Culture
2.1 Basic Color Terms
Color terms play an important role in daily life，all languages have words that may be used to identify particular colors，but there is always a special subset of these words known as “basic color terms”．In the world，a great amount of the research into color naming has focused on basic color terms introduced by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay (1969: 4), who made a landmark study of color and proposed basic color theory, and each basic color term should exhibit the following four characteristics:
(1)There is a psychological criterion: Salience is supposed to be one which people think of quickly and readily. Basic color terms do not depend directly on any reference object or substance (like silver，chocolate) though they may arise historically from the name of a concrete object (like English orange);all are psychologically salient，though there are some intuitive affinities among them (eg. between pink and red，between orange and yellow)
(2)It is monolexical，and its meaning is not predictable from the meaning of its parts (1ike bluish, greenish，reddish，and golden)．Basic color terms can not be compounds (like blue-green, lemon-colored，1ight-blue, or charcoal-black)，and normally have a consistent morphological structure.
(3)It does not refer to an object．That means it is usable in wide range of context．Its application must not be restricted to a narrow class of objects．It is not collocationally restricted．For example，the word ‘‘blond’’ may be predicated only of hair，complexion and furniture．So the word “blond” should be ruled out．
(4)It must have a wide inclusion．Its signification is not included in that of any other color terms．It is broad or general in meaning，in the sense that it is not regarded as a “kind of” any other color．For example，the words “crimson” ,“scarlet” are both kinds of “red” for most speakers of English．
Berlin and Kay restricted their investigation to what they called basic color terms．
Different languages have different number of basic color terms．Some have four or five，and some have as few as two，but English has eleven: “black”，“white”, “red”， “blue”，“yellow”，“green”，“orange”，“purple”，“pink”，“brown” and “grey”．They are all frequently used and all are mutually exclusive. Compared with elaborated color terms derived from them，basic color terms have a broader denotation and richer connotation in a certain culture.
So for the sake of convenience，the present study has only concerned the first six of all eleven basic color terms in Chinese and English, i.e. “hei”(black)， “bai”(white)，“hong”(red)，“huang”(yellow)，“lu” (geen)，“lan”(blue). They, “primary colors”(Kay and McDaniel，1978), are hardly excluded from any researcher’ s work. However，this does not imply that other color terms are unworthy of exploration. Similarly，it is by no means claimed that a thorough study has been done regarding the six basic co1or terms in question. The reason for this is that the data collected is far from comprehensive in terms of quantity，and could sometimes be biased in terms of quality.
2.2 Colors and Culture
Culture is everything and everywhere. To sociologists, a culture is a system of ideas，values，beliefs，knowledge，norms，custom and technology shared by almost everyone in a particular society．In the history, Boas pointed out that all the societies had unique cultures that were different from other societies（Boas，F 1966）. Nevertheless, when we use the “culture”, we usually mean to say that culture is any of the customs, worldview, language, kinship system, social organization, and other taken-for-granted day-to-day practices of a people which set that group apart as a distinctive group. To put it simply，culture means the total way of life of a people．“ culture is a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors and artifacts that the member of a society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning” (Samovar & Porter 2000:35).
There is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and altered by culture. Cultural nature can be reflected most in the level of words. To understand color images in a certain culture，one must understand the cultural background.
In ancient china, the underlying idea is that complementary forces of yin(阴) and yang(阳) arise as a fundamental fact of the universe. They depend on one another for their very existence. The Chinese firmly believe that the universe needs a balance between yin and yang, and the efforts should be geared toward harmonizing the two.
In the meanwhile, Chinese people hold a belief hat everything under the sky can be classified under five elements, namely gold (metal), wood, water, fire, and earth. Then each of the five elements relates to a color, which, in turn, has its own significance and symbolic value for the Chinese. The five colors, namely “red” (hong), “yellow”(huang), “green” or “blue”(qing), “white”(bai), “black”(hei) are further matched with five orientations and for seasons. hence, the relationships between these factors have an impact in the semantics of the Chinese color words(杨永林，2002:39-45)。Please refer to table 1
Table 1 color/element/nature/orientation/season relationships
Color
Red
Yellow
Green/blue
White
Black
Element
Fire
Earth
Wood
Gold
Water
Nature
Yang
Yang
Yin
Yang
Yin
Orientation
South
Center
East
West
North
Season
Summer

Spring
Autumn
Winter
Obviously，colors not only stand for physical nature, but also are endued with human beings’ thought and emotions. Resourceful connotations of colors have been existing on a solid ground for culture, whatever from ancient to now or at home and abroad.
In Greece and Roman, there is also color image. Red was sacred to Ceres(谷类的女神）and Dionysus(酒神狄俄尼索斯). A white robe symbolized purity; a red robe was symbol of sacrifice and love, and a blue robe represented altruism and integrity. Greek artists also gave a symbolism to color. Mythology told of the four ages of humanity as gold, silver, copper, and iron. Blue was used to symbolize earth, red was for fire, green for water, and yellow for air.
The color meanings vary with cultures, which are expressed obviously in various languages. In other words, color terms, the language carrier of colors, have their different connotations in different cultures. So the following chapter will further embody them.
3 A Comparative Study of Cultural Connotations of Basic Color Words in Chinese and English
In human language there exist a number of color terms that make the world colorful. These color terms are full of rich emotional elements and cultural connotations in languages. It is noticed that different people from different cultures have different sense to colors in cross-cultural communication. In this chapter, the exploration of cultural connotations of the six basic color terms is made. And research on the cultural connotation of major color terms in Chinese and English can enrich our understanding of relationships between language and culture, to show cultural differences between peoples of speaking different languages. Thus we will make a brief comparison of the color terms in different cultural backgrounds, revealing their cultural connotations.
(1) Red
“Red” is associated with warmth, love, beauty and life out of the sun worship in the ancient times. The sun rose from the east, and its fiery color and heat brought ancient people feeling of mystery. They got direct benefits from the warmth of the sun and fire, and therefore, they associated the sun with warmth and brightness and then associated the color o