Contrastive Study Of Chinese And Japanese Metaphors Of Black White And Gray

The words related to color are commonly used in people’s life.With the continuous change of language in history and life,these words,which were initially limited to describing color,derived many abstract meanings.In addition,words related to the same color have different derivation meanings in different languages.Both China and Japan have made systematic research on color related words,but most of studies focus on the origin,evolution,classification and naming of color words.Although there are also researches on metaphor of color words from the perspective of culture,the depth of research needs to be improved.There are not many researches from the perspective of cognitive science.In addition,both Chinese and Japanese scholars are more inclined to study basic color words.I take a different approach to the research object,focusing on the colorless color words,black,white and gray,which are also common in daily life.From the perspective of cognition,a large number of data were collected,sorted out,and classified according to the commendatory and derogatory meanings.It was found that the metaphorical meanings of the three colors,in whether Chinese or Japanese,were more derogatory,and were formed by exaggerating and emphasizing the lightness or saturation of color elements.By integrating data to explore the characteristics of colorless words in China and Japan,it is found that color words in Chinese often appear in pairs.This paper divides this situation into two categories.The first category is related to colorless color words,black,white and gray.At this time,the situation in Chinese and Japanese is the same,that is,black and white represent the two extremes of a thing,and gray is the middle ground.The second type is the situation where colorless and colored words appear in pairs.At this time,the metaphorical meaning of colorless words in Chinese is derogatory,while this feature is not obvious in Japanese.The characteristics of color metaphor can also be well explored through the frequency of its use.In Chinese,the metaphors of colored words are used more frequently than those of colorless words.On the contrary,the metaphors of colorless words in Japanese are used more frequently than those of colored words.The commonality and individuality of colorless color words black,white and gray in Chinese and Japanese metaphorical cognition are mainly caused by the differences in national psychology.Different national cultural backgrounds have a certain impact on the metaphorical meaning of color words and the formation of their commendatory and derogatory usages.