The Language Contact Horizon Chinese-English Basic Color Terms Cultural Connotation Comparative Study

We live in the world which is related to colors, and color term can be involved in almost every aspect of our daily life, playing important roles in cultural communication. As a special group in a language, the color terOms are used to refer to the color of objects. Meanwhile, restricted by culture, color terms also have some cultural features to show people's feelings, attitudes and opinions, also transmit some cultural connotations and involve in some practical communicative implications. On the other hand, color terms are loaded with a large number of information, which is based on the history, reality and culture of a specific society. In addition, color terms reflect some cultural features, such as religion, custom, geography, psychology, etc.When two countries who use different languages communicate, language contact must be unavoidable; this involves the transmission of the cultures and technologies from one language community to another. During the process, every language has the same chance to be lent and borrowed. Therefore, it's very common that the cultural contact between different languages would lead to the phenomena of borrowing the color terms or their connotations.In this thesis, based on Kay&McDaniel(1978)'s study of six basic color terms-red, black, white, yellow, green, blue, and from the aspect of language contact, the author intends make a contrast study about the color terms and their connotations between English and Chinese.Chapter one is an introduction about the present study in the respective aspect of color terms and language contact. Based on them, the author introduces the concepts of cultural contact and lexical borrowing, and also introduces how to apply this theory to the study of color terms, which can provide some theory evidence for the following analysis on cultural connotations of the color words.In chapter two, after processing the lexical meanings of Chinese and English, the author shows the cultural connotations of the six basic color words that underlie their respective language culture, and also use the method of comparative analysis to conclude the similarities and differences of the cultural connotations between the Chinese and English color terms. To a certain extent, this study presents the history transition and developing law of a language, which provides some realistic basis for the following study in next chapter.In chapter three, the author makes some theoretical analysis on the above conclusion, finding that, in the contact between Chinese and English, they borrow the words from each other, meanwhile the cultures, relevant to the color's connotations, are also influenced by each other, and this influence will be continually developing and changing. Therefore, it is fatal to study from the aspect of language contact for correctly catching cultural connotations of the Chinese and English color terms. In addition, this study also has much pragmatic value in the area of cross cultural communication.