| Color terms are an important part of the language system, which have been the focus of linguists. Many linguists abroad and at home have yielded fruitful results from different aspects of color terms. But there are a few researches of color terms of minority languages, and fewer researches involving cognitive comparative analysis of color terms of these minority languages. The object of this thesis is Uyghur middle school students’cognitive differences of color codability in English and Chinese, which needs the combination of cognitive linguistics and holistic model of color terms to study comprehensively, it is also an attempt of integrated use of linguistics knowledge to make the actual research.In cognitive linguistics, the prototype theory of categorization is also derived from the study of color terms. This paper tries to combine the prototype theory and Berlin and Kay’s theory of basic color terms in the holistic model of Professor Yang Yonglin’s to make differences of color terms in English and Chinese and Uyghur, and this cognitive model combined with the social-cultural factors avoids the one-sidedness of the previous studies.The study collects the text translation of112third-year Uyghur students of Urumqi NO.58Middle School (XJJC), and statistics and analysis of material find Uyghur middle school students have the same cognition of basic color terms in English and Chinese in the text (they are black, white, red, yellow, and blue), but different cognition of some non-basic color terms in the text. And this paper gets some preliminary understanding by the comparison of students’experimental text and tracking interview:on the one hand, since the languages and cultures around the world have a common basic kernel, English, Chinese and Uyghur basic color terms have a certain similarity, such as red symbolizes the enthusiasm and vitality, white has the pure symbolism, etc; on the other hand, due to the different language rooted in different cultural soil, the Uyghur middle school students in the perception of some non-basic color terms reveals a different cultural heritage.In order to help narrow Uyghur middle school students’cultural cognitive obstacles in the process of learning English and avoid the cognitive errors of color terms, teachers should pay attention to and cultivate the cross-cultural understanding and learning ability of Uyghur middle school students, and help to preclude the students from the impact of their native environment. The educational department should provide teachers more training opportunities to improve teachers’professional knowledge and teaching level, and this will have a significant role in foreign language teaching and translation of English and Chinese and Uyghur. |
