A Study On Color Words Polysemy From Metaphor And Metonymy In Chinese And English

Frequently used in various languages, polysemy serves as a very important languagephenomenon. Not only linguists, but also philosophers have paid attention to it. The color words,as one kind of the sense words reflecting concepts of the color domain, are a vital part oflanguage vocabulary. They are polysemous words as well. According to Langacker(1987),color domain is also one of the basic cognitive domains, just the same as time domain, spatialdomain and emotional domain. When concepts of the color domain are used to express andinterpret concepts of other domains under the influence of thought and cognition, meanings ofcolor words are no longer the prototypes meanings of those words, but meanings develop fromoriginal ones through metaphorical or metonymic extension. Simply speaking, it’s thegeneration of color words polysemy. However, by analyzing the existing literature, it’s notdifficult to find that most scholars talk about polysemy generally, only few of them take specificvocabulary as breakpoints. This paper focuses on the phenomenon of some specific color wordspolysemy both in Chinese and English. By collecting multiple meanings of color words fromvarious linguistic data, this paper gives a deep analysis of the generation and evolution of colorwords polysemy in Chinese and English from the perspective of metaphor and metonymy. Atthe same time, it points out that the generation and evolution of color words polysemy abide bythe cactus model. But there are many different meanings of color words in Chinese and Englishdue to different cultural values, historical background, and other factors. The factors in theevolution of color words polysemy need to be probed into.Language is a mirror of culture, and color words are an important part of language. Thecognitive study on color words polysemy in Chinese and English from the perspective ofmetaphor and metonymy can conduce to understand the working mechanisms of metaphor andmetonymy. Besides, it can enhance the recognition of national cultural values. Moreover, thepresent study also contributes to cross-cultural communication and English language teachingand learning.