A Contrastive Study On Cultural Connotations Of English And Chinese Basic Color Words/Characters

The world we live in is very colorful. There are various color words and expressions of colors used to depict the colorful world. Though different nations have different color conceptions, basic color words/characters, such as black/黑,white/白,red/红,yellow/黄, green/绿,blue/蓝,purple/紫,grey/灰, brown/棕etc. are in common in both English and Chinese. Basic color words/characters are always closely connected with Chinese and English cultures and reflect many different cultures of the two nations.Both English and Chinese are the languages with a very long history, and they are abundant in color words/characters, among which basic color words/characters are especially culture-loaded and have their own cultural connotations reflecting English and Chinese social cultures, history, philosophy and so on. With the rapid development of China, there are more and more cross-cultural communications between China and the western countries. Basic color words/characters are the ones that often cause people's misunderstandings owing to the diversities of different connotations. So it's very significant to make a contrastive study on the cultural connotations of basic color words/characters in both English and Chinese.The primary issue of this thesis is how to determine the basic color words/characters in English. According to the researches that have been done before, the color words are divided into two categories—basic color words and object color words. Based on Berlin and Kay's theory, this paper considers that there are nine pairs of common basic color words/characters in English and Chinese including black/黑,white/白,red/红,yellow/黄, green/绿,blue/蓝,purple/紫,grey/灰and brown/棕. Because brown/棕in English and Chinese has few cultural connotations, the thesis just makes a contrastive study on the other eight pairs of basic color words/characters.The studies on color words have been done since long time ago, so the author has made a literature review first and discovered that the related researches are mainly from six perspectives including philosophy, psychology, sociolinguistics and ethnography, linguistics, anthropology. Therefore, it's no doubt that there are almost no systematically contrastive studies on the cultural connotations of color words in different languages so far.Therefore, based on the theoretical foundations of this thesis—Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and Berlin and Kay's theory, the thesis has made a systematically contrastive study on eight pairs of the basic color words/characters in English and Chinese as follows: firstly the cultural connotations of basic words/characters in English and Chinese are classified and contrasted from two aspects—derogatory and commendatory meaning; secondly, the cultural connotations of each pair of color words/characters are listed and the origins of which are analyzed in detail; at last, the similar and dissimilar cultural connotations are listed in tables respectively.The reasons for the similarity and dissimilarity of cultural connotations of basic color words/characters between English and Chinese are expounded from six aspects, which include culture experience, the perceptions of color, natural environment, philosophy, religion, customs and traditions. Through the study, the author makes a conclusion that culture is the underlying cause of this phenomenon. Finally, the thesis expounds the significance of this study.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is literature review which introduces the basic color words/characters in English and Chinese, the studies on them at home and abroad. Chapter Two gives the theoretical foundation of this thesis: Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and Berlin and Kay's theory. Chapter Three serves as the main body of this thesis, firstly finding out the common basic color words/characters in English and Chinese based on the theory of basic color words, then discussing the cultural connotations of English and Chinese common color words/characters in detail and contrasting the similarities and dissimilarities between them. Chapter Four probes the causes of similarities and dissimilarities including perceptions of color, natural environment, philosophy, religions, traditions and customs. Chapter Five tells us the significance of the contrasting study and puts forward some suggestions for better teaching and translating the basic color words/characters in both languages. Finally the paper concludes that though different nation may have different colors and different color words, there are some colors and color words in common. To understand the cultural connotations of the same color words in different languages, the cultural background of them should be learned so that misunderstanding will not be caused in cross-cultural communications.To sum up language carries and reflects culture, so do the basic color words/characters as a part of language. Through the contrastive study on the cultural connotations of basic color words/characters in English and Chinese, the thesis concludes that in cross-cultural communication, the study will make people teach and learn English better and do translation more correctly and precisely.