Comparison Of Cultural Connotations Of English And Chinese Basic Color Words

Color words are an important part of the language system both in Chinese and English.They receive wide attention at home and abroad in the field of linguistics. Color words are notonly a description of the color of objects, but also the essence of human culture andcivilization. Through color words we can learn people’s religious beliefs, customs, andaesthetics and so on.This paper mainly introduces and analyzes cultural connotation of basic color terms “红(red),白(white),黑(black),绿(green),黄(yellow),蓝(blue)“in Chinese and English basedon the Berlin and Kay ’s basic color words theory.It also explores the main and root causes of different cultural connotations of basic colorterms. The paper is divided into four chapters: The first chapter is the introduction. Itintroduces the definition of basic color terms in Chinese and English, the main researchachievements at home and abroad, as well as my own research questions and researchmethods. The second chapter introduces cultural connotation performance of the six basiccolor terms in Chinese and English. And this part also has comparative analysis. Then draws aconclusion that the same colors may have different cultural connotations in differentlanguages, and cultural connotations of different color words may be the same or similar. Thethird chapter talks about environmental determinism. And the different geographicalenvironments are identified as root causes for different cultural connotations of Chinese andEnglish basic color words. The fourth chapter is the conclusion. It focuses on the limitationsof this study as well as suggestions for future research.