A Contrastive Study On The Culture Loaded Meaning Of Color Words In English And Chinese

The blue sky, green trees, red flowers... colors are all around in this world. Everywhere people can see all kinds of colors and thus have various understandings and knowledge. Inevitably, different connotations are added to colors. It can't be denied that all languages have rich and abundant color words, and for each language the color words carry specific cultural connotations, namely culture loaded meanings."Culture loaded meaning refers to the meaning that is added historic meanings, customs, geographical environmental meanings and other cultural meanings to the concept meanings of words."(Wu Youfu, 2005) With the increasing advancement of the globalization and the development of communication and cooperation between nations, it is particularly significant to carry out contrastive studies on the culture loaded meanings of vocabulary in English and Chinese. Therefore, this study aims to make a contrastive study on the culture loaded meanings of color words in English and Chinese. It is true that there are many previous related studies on the composition, meanings, usage, and translation of color words. For various researches, different theories are adopted, such as cognitive linguistics, cross-cultural communication, coding degree theory, basic color word theory and etc. However, there are few contrastive studies on the culture loaded meaning of color words in English and Chinese.Based on schema theory and cross-cultural communication theory, applying literature study, qualitative research, quantitative research, as well as contrastive analysis as the research methodology, this study makes a contrastive study on the culture loaded meanings of the eight color words between English and Chinese: red/hong (红), yellow/huang (黄), black/hei (黑), white/bai (白), green/lv (绿), blue/lan (蓝), gray/hui (灰) and purple/zi (紫). And then it is designed to explore the significance of understanding and perception of culture loaded meanings for English teaching and learning, as well as Chinese-English mutual translation and cross-cultural communication.Schema is"an active organization of past reaction, or past experience"(Bartlett, 1932), a set of"interactive knowledge structure"stored in the long-term memory in grade forms (Rumelhart, 1977). Most scholars hold that schema is a general concept of the outer world which is input and stored in human brains. The schema theory suggests that when people understand and absorb input information, they need to associate the input information with the existing information in their brains, and so the decoding and encoding of the new information rely very much on the information, frame or network existed in the brains. Schemata come from repetition, are multilayered, and interrelated, besides, schemata can be activated, modified and restructured. It is well known that intercultural communication or cross-cultural communication refers to the communication between persons coming from different cultures, so the communication between English and Chinese peoples belongs to this kind of communication. In today's society, intercultural communication is much more frequent than ever before, then studies on culture loaded meanings of language are theoretically and practically meaningful. Further, the related research can promote the study on cross-cultural communication theory. Schema theory and the cross-cultural communication theory play important roles in the proper understandings and applications of language,and at the same time, they have functions in English teaching and learning, as well as Chinese-English mutual translation and cross-cultural communication.Through contrastive studies and detailed analysis, it is found out that for the culture loaded meaning of English and Chinese color words, there are both similarities and striking differences, which proves that each language carries its national traits. For instance, some color words take the similar culture loaded meanings as red, hong (红) in the phrases"red carpet, hongditan (红地毯)", both representing the meaning of welcome. However, some color words take different culture loaded meanings and are used on different occasions such as"white, bai (白)"carrying their own national characters"happiness and purity"in wedding ceremony in England and America, but"mourning"in funeral in China. With the increasing international communication, different cultures meet and absorb elements from each other, so there are more and more similarities of culture loaded meanings in different languages, for example, the white color with the connotations of"happiness and purity"in wedding ceremonies of England and America conveys the same meaning for many Chinese young people today in their own wedding ceremonies. Furthermore, the scientific schemata and good communicative competence can improve the efficiency of English teaching and learning, meanwhile, schema knowledge can improve the capabilities of translation and cross-cultural communication.This study is of great benefit to the comprehensive understandings of the culture loaded meanings of color words in these two languages. The findings of the study can, to a degree, contribute to the English teaching and learning, Chinese-English mutual translation and cross-cultural communication between English and Chinese, besides, it can make up for the unbalanced situation of color words studies. Thus it has certain theoretical and practical significance for English teaching and learning, as well as Chinese-English mutual translation and cross-cultural communication.