毕业论文——Culture Difference of Color Words in Chinese and Western Countries.doc

Contents Abstract1 Key words.1 一、Color and Color Words .3 (一) Color Words and their Historical Backgrounds3 (二) Basic Color Words.4 1、Definition of Basic Color Words.4 2、English Basic Color Words .4 3、Chinese Basic Color Words.4 二、The study of the Color Expressions and connotations between English and Chinese.5 (一) Comparison of English and Chinese Expressions on Colors.5 1、Metaphorical meaning of English and Chinese Color Expressions.5 2、Different Expressions of peoples feeling and association.6 (二) The Expression of color word “Red “7 1、Expression of emotion.7 2、Expression of joy and good luck7 (三) The cultural connotations of red.8 1、The similarities between red and 红.8 2、The differences between red and 红.8 三、Factors Affecting the Differences of Color Words in Chinese and English.9 (一) Cultural Tradition and Customs.9 (二) Religious Belief.9 (三) Color words and emotion.10(四) Understanding and usage in Color words.10 Conclusion.10References .11Acknowledgements.12 Culture Difference of Color Words in Chinese and Western CountriesAbstract: People live in a colorful world. When people are enjoying the beautiful scene of nature, they created many words to describe color. As a powerful form of communication, color is irreplaceable. Because of different language culture, cultural traditions, psychological and historic backgrounds, the cultural connotations of the English and Chinese color words differ greatly. Different uses of color words in Chinese and English languages reflect their cultural differencesFrom the point of cultural analysis, this paper have described the meanings between English and Chinese color words, introduced the mode of expression of color words and analyzed its cultural connotations, in the hope of helping people to correctly know their specific usage and differences in cross-cultural communicating, improving our language capabilities and successfully realizing cross-cultural communication.Keywords: English and Chinese color words; cultural connotations; cultural differences;Introduction:Colorful materials build the world and our world is wonderful. Does language shape culture or does culture shape language? In my opinion, language is a mirror, precisely reflecting the connotation of culture. Language is an important tool for human beings to communicate with each other. At the same time it is an important and outstanding component of culture and imposes great impact on culture. However, culture is imparted and transmitted by language. It wouldnt exist culture without language. “Language and culture are mutually in existence.” The words of “gorgeous world” and “color life” prove that color is related to peoples life closely and people live in the color world. As people live in the world with abundant color, to which their feelings are inevitably influenced by their native cultural tradition. The value of color is an organic component of the cultural value. Scientific research indicates that seven million kinds of colors can be found in the world. However, color expressions are only limited to several hundreds in classification. Peoples actual life is closely related to color. There are many color expressions, which reflect different culture psychologies and emotional colorings both in Chinese and English. As we know, color is the physical appearance. Although people are in different countries, they also have the same reflections of colors. Because the mankind has the same physiological mechanism and vision nerve, the color words are no different in essence, theoretically. However, because of various language culture, historical background, religious belief, mode of thinking, aesthetic temperament and interest, etc. in different nationality, peoples impression of color and expression are different, and the associative meaning produced by the color has nothing in common with each other. There are different and various color words and expressions in English and Chinese. Sometimes it is difficult to find equivalent expression in one language. Chinese scholars, Yao Xiaoping and Liu Danqing, have done deep research on the color words in Chinese. They took the cultural factors into consideration in the research of the developing process of color words. They thought that the cultural factors would have effect on the existence and development of the basic color words, about which Berlin and Kay didnt concern. In recent years, many researchers also have taken part in the comparative research of the color words in Chinese and English, such as Meng Jianghong(2001), who studied different endowed meanings of the color words in Chinese and English. “Since human beings have the same physical mechanism and optic nervous system, it is no differences in the feelings of colors in theory”, sensory organs such as eyes, ears and nose to sense the environment, and the sensations received by them are routed through our nervous system to our brains, where they are interpreted and recorded. Therefore, the reflections in our minds of the objective world are the same, that is, they refer to things and interpret unit of meanings by means of the same concepts. However, due to the differences of custom, geographical position, history, religion, psychology, some colors have already been the obstructions in the cross-cultural communication. So learning the similarities and differences of color terms in English and Chinese has a great effect on the cross-cultural communication. For instance, in the traditional Chinese weddings, the bride, who wore red shoes, red dress, and a red veil, sat in red-painted palanquin, greeted by the bridegroom who rode a horse with a big red silk-made flower on the chest. After the ceremony, they would enter into the bridal chamber decorated with red things-red candles, red bed, red quilts, red bedsores, and red pillows. What's more, the gifts sent by the guests were enveloped in red paper packages. These red things not only show the joyful atmosphere, but also suggest that the newly married couple will have a happy life in the future. It is natural that English terms of colors may have cultural associations that are not transparent to Chinese learners of English as a foreign language. The following paragraphs are meant to focus on the one color terms-red, and to help us attain a better understanding.一、Color and Color WordsColor, a kind of natural phenomenon, is a result of humans perception to the outside world. It looks like a long colorized belt with close continuity. Originally, color is an abstract concept and a blurry sense. There are a great variety of objects, each of which has specific color. With the evolution of human civilization, the vocabulary related to colors, which are called color words are used to express the color of certain substance. And color words are authorized signs to illustrate color. Nowadays, in some extents, color words are considered as a kind of “common language” for people of different countries. But, because of the great cultural, historical and psychological differences, color words of different countries may also have various peculiarities.(一) Color Words and their Historical BackgroundsColor words, in whatever languages, are used for describing different things. The statistics show that there are more than 7 million kinds of colors can be recognized in the nature. However, the color names are very limited in the languages because there are only dozens of colors expressed in single-morpheme word. A number of color words are expressed by adding modifiers, for instance, crimson, pale red, apple green, azure, coffee color etc. Color words reflect the different cultural connotations in different languages. People regard color words with special esteem in different countries. We should not only understand their basic meanings, but also pay attention to their deeply symbolic meanings. The symbolic meanings of color words have different features in different cultures. History, background, aesthetic and psychology are different because of our countrys geography. So, the feeling of the color words will not be the same, and the symbolic meanings of color words will be various. According to the definition of color, it is clear that color is a vision phenomenon aroused by the reflecting and radiating of object. The definition of color is blurry in China feudal society. In Western, it is easily accepted for its development of education and science. At the beginning, the Western people pay attention to things rationally. They often display the basic meaning of color words to the objective world, so the symbolic meanings of the color words are very direct in Western culture. The Western people express some abstract cultural meaning with the concrete color of objective things. For example, in Western culture “getting red” means the color of “blood”. Among the mind in Western culture, once the blood trickles, the life end, so people always associate red with the violence, dangerous, and it is a taboo word in Western culture. When Western Sinologists translate “Dream of the Red Chamber,” they consider that “red” makes Western people feel blood; they adopt title “the story of the stone” to avoid the misunderstanding of the word “red “. (二)Basic Color WordsColor words in different languages as well have a lot of traits in common. The two world-famous scholars Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, after a thorough and careful study, pointed out that there are eleven color categories in our world, which are known as “Basic Color Words”, containing white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange and gray.1、Definition of Basic Color WordsIdeally, each basic color world, or basic each color term, should exhibit the following three characteristics:It is non-lexemic; that is, its meaning is not predictable from the meaning of its parts.Its signification is not including in that of any other color world.Its application must not be restricted to a narrow class of objects.There criteria are sufficient to determine the basic color word in a given language in nearly all cases.2、English Basic Color WordsAs Brent Berlin and Paul Kay declared, different nations have different numbers of color words, English, with a relatively richer cultural background, has all the eleven basic color words: white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange and gray.3、Chinese Basic Color WordsChinese basic colors include white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple and gray. It seems that there are fewer Chinese color words than English ones, but in fact, Chinese is one of the richest and most colorful languages in the world, having many words with color to show prolific meanings.二、The study of the Color Expressions and connotations between English and Chinese(一) Comparison of English and Chinese Expressions on Colors1、Metaphorical meaning of English and Chinese Color ExpressionsIn the course of university English teaching in the past seven years, many people keep in touch with a large number of English teaching materials, and they can come across the colors showing metaphor meaning frequently. What does “green with envy” mean in English? Does jealousy or envy make eyes become blue and green? He was in a blue mood. How shall we explain it? Is his mood happy or sad? Quite obviously, the color expressions mentioned above have not already been objective, but has been endowed with the culture atmosphere in depth. According to the dictionary, the word “green” means “(face) become green”; and “green with envy” which belongs to the regular phrase match means “envying very much”. While being used to reflect the mood, the words of blue and mood in the second example show “melancholy”. This sentence should be translated into “His mood is very low”. In fact, these kinds of color expressions that react to psychology of people or words of emotional color are too numerous to be mentioned in Chinese. According to the associated meaning and metaphor, we compare English bilingual culture with Chinese.According to Chinese and English bilingual cultures, the “white” association in peoples mind is rather similar: holy, pure, clean, and honest. For example, there are “innocent”, “pure white such as the jade”, “hospital nurse”, “telling the truth and will receive a lighter sentence”, etc. that expression in Chinese. “A white soul” expresses “pure soul” in English. And what does “a white lie” mean? It means “no hostile lie”, namely because of courtesy to compile pieces of excuse to tell lies but no intention of cheating others. Between Chinese and English bilingual cultures, “white” also has the meaning of “pale, white”. For example, “(as) white as a sheet” means “the face is pale” because of being frightened or shocked; (as) white as snow mean “white, extremely white”. “White” is used to be a taboo word basically in Chinese traditional culture. And it is a symbol of death and ill omen. When a relative dies, the family members wear the white clothing in order to show grief. In the feudal society, the white is the common people's favorite color. From Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, “white clothing” means ordinary people, “commoner” means the person who has no scholarly honor of official rank. “(Chen,1996：98)” Most westerners feel obscure about the “white” word in Chinese “weddings and funerals”. You had better not translate two colors of “red”, “white” at all, only