英汉基本颜色词的对比研究.doc

学科分类号：050201
湖南人文科技学院
本科生毕业论文

题目（中文）：英汉基本颜色词文化内涵对比研究
（英文）：A Comparative Study of Cultural Connotations of Basic Color Terms between English and Chinese
学生姓名： 赵星艳 学号 08403609
系 部： 外语系
专业年级： 英语专业2008级
指导教师（姓名）：　　 曾　妍　　 　　　　
（职称）：　　　 讲 师　　　　

湖南人文科技学院教务处制

A Comparative Study of Cultural Connotations of Basic Color Terms between English and Chinese

By Zhao Xingyan

May 16, 2012

内 容 摘 要

人类生活在一个丰富多彩的世界里，颜色渗透在我们生活的各个领域，颜色本身是一种抽象概念却为具体颜色词所描绘，颜色词是人们根据自然界中颜色的视觉意像用自己独特的语言给其添上的不同标签，而基本颜色词则是颜色范畴的典型代表因为它们能将该范畴最好地表现出来，它们是极富表现力的语言，不同语言的基本颜色词承载着不同文化的内涵，了解文化的含义及文化内涵的定义，理解颜色词与文化之间的关系有助于弄清色彩语言文化内涵的普遍性与民族差异性。
在人类语言变迁的历史长河中，英语和汉语用来表示颜色的颜色词数不胜数，而英汉基本颜色词如red和红, yellow和黄，white和白，black和黑, green和绿 以及purple和紫作为文化承载反映着明显的民族文化差异，在人类语言中占据着举足轻重的地位。由于生活习惯、社会、历史、以及地理等文化因素的差异，英汉基本颜色词有着各自的文化内涵，运用文化对比的方法参照大量基本颜色词短句和习语，便可从色彩与宗教、政治、社会心理，以及自然和社会背景等几方面对英汉基本颜色词的文化内涵进行全面理解。众所周知，由于东西文化差异，英汉文化交流出现的误解在所难免，然而对比研究英汉基本颜色词文化内涵的异同对跨文化交际，翻译以及教学中有关颜色词的理解则大有裨益。

关键词：对比研究；基本颜色词；文化内涵

Abstract

We are living in a colorful world where there is a variety of colors permeating every area of our daily life. Color itself is an abstract concept and a vague sense, nevertherness it is described by the specific color term. Color terms are the labels which are added to colors by people who live up to their different visual image from nature and basic color terms are the prototypes in the different color categories for they best show the color of their own category. Basic color terms, magic in expression, are the cultural carriers of different languages. Having a good knowledge of the relationship between color terms and cultural connotation is benefit to make clear out the similarities and national differences in color terms.
English and Chinese both have numerous color terms while they acquire different connotations as a result of the development of languages in the long history. The basic color words like red and红, yellow and黄, black and黑, white and白, green and绿, purple and紫，have heavy weight in our human languages. As a group of culture-loaded words, basic color words express and reflect different cultural discrepancies. In regard to the two cultural habits, social history and geographical conditions vary a great deal, English and Chinese basic color terms bear their own cultural connotation. With the correct definition of cultural connotation and the analysis of connections between color words and culture, a great many examples of expressions and idioms can be used to make a contrast of cultural connotation between the basic color pairs mentioned above by comparing the two cultural connotations from religious, political aspects，national psychology and social backgrounds, exploring the similarities and national differences in color terms. As we all know, there’s no doubt that some misunderstandings can’t be avoided in cross-communication for the discrepancies do exist between Eastern and Western culture. However, the cultural contrastive study on basic color terms will expectedly benefit cross-cultural communication, Chinese translation and English teaching a lot.

Key Words: contrastive study; basic color terms; cultural connotations

Contents

Introduction 1
1. Overview of Color Terms and Culture 5
1.1 Comprehension of Color, Color Terms and Basic Color Terms 6
1.2 Comprehension of Culture and Cultural Connotation 8
1.3 Relationship between Color Terms and Culture 9
2. Comparison of Basic Color Terms between English and Chinese from Culture 11
2.1 Compare between Red and 红 11
2.1.1 Cultural Similarities Between Red and 红 12
2.1.2 Cultural Differences Between Red and 红 13
2.2 Compare between Yellow and黄 15
2.2.1 Cultural Similarities Between Yellow and黄 15
2.2.2 Cultural Differences Between Yellow and黄 17
2.3 Compare between White and白 18
2.3.1 Cultural Similarities between White and白 19
2.3.2 Cultural Differences between White and白 20
2.4 Compare between Black and 黑 21
2.4.1 Cultural Similarities between Black and 黑 22
2.4.2 Cultural Differences between Black and 黑 23
2.5 Compare between Green and 绿 24
2.5.1 Cultural Similarities between Green and 绿 24
2.5.2 Cultural Differences between Green and 绿 25
2.6 Compare between Purple and 紫 26
2.6.1 Cultural Similarities between Purple and 紫 27
2.6.2 Cultural Differences between Purple and 紫 28
3. Causes for Cultural Similarities and Differences in Basic Color Terms 29
3.1 Religion 29
3.2 Social Political System 32
3.3 National Psychology 33
3.4 Natural and Social Background 35
Conclusion 37
Notes 39
References 40

Introduction

Each progress of research is closely linked with human civilization. Color terms form a special group of glossary and the special quality of color term has been attracting scholars from home and abroad.
Research on color terms in foreign countries can go back to the ancient Greece and mainly centered in philosophy. In the 17th century, with the emerge of natural science, people studied color and color terms in physics and optics. In the 18th century, the development of philosophy gave rise to the aesthetic study of color words. In the 19th century, the rise of cultural study laid solid foundation for contrasting and comparing color terms from a cross-cultural perspective. From the last century until now, the linguists’ participation made the notions of the universality of language principles highly valued and accepted in the system of color terms. In the recent thirty years, with the development of neurology, biogenetics, cognitive science and cognitive psychology, people are unveiling the complicated relationship in the color terms’ system, which contributes to better understanding of the internal and external systems of color words and to further the study of linguistic color terms. Details of the studies are as follows.
Studies on color in philosophy: Plato and Aristotle were pioneers in the early pursuit of color and color vision. Plato put forward three conditions that must be satisfied in perceiving colors—a light source, an object that reflects the light, and a functional eye that can receive the reflected light. Aristotle developed another philosophic tradition in his pursuit of the same issue. In his opinion, simple colors related to some basic elements in the physical world and the nature of colors is assumed that simple colors were mixtures of “black” and “white” (or darkness and light). A contemporary philosopher deserving mention is Russell, who views the color system from a semantic perspective to show the correlation between the perceptual vagueness of color boundaries and the linguistic difficulty of defining the meaning of color terms.
Studies on color physics and optics: Newton is a typical representative of this school. It was not until 1672 that Newton had creatively conducted the experiment that people began to correlate color and spectrum with color conceptions. What characterizes this group of scholars is the experimentation rather than sensation, which is the basis of their color research.
Studies on color in culture: In the early 20th century, E. Sapir and B.L. Wholf put forword Language Relative Theory, then Bloomfield carried out Culture Contact Theory, both of which offered a foundation for studying color terms in the frame of language and culture. With the publication of Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, Berlin and Kay suggest that the expression “basic color term” does not have a unique operational definition, yet they lay out four basic criteria to judge whether a color word is basic or not. Influenced by Berlin and Kay’s publication, basic color terms theory has resulted in great achievements in cross-discipline researches.
Studies on color in linguistics: D.A.Curse Lexical and Semantics , which provided study on color with rich semantic theory such as associative meaning of color words. John R. Taylor’s Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory states that basic color terms are the prototypes of a color category.
All achievements mentioned above about color abroad lay a solid foundation for future study; meanwhile, they also give significant suggestions and insights to our relative research at home.
In China, people perceived several colors and produced as many color terms as possible because of the development of dying and pottery industries. In ancient China, the theory of “Yin Yang” and “Five Elements” actually introduced the five main color words: “green (or blue), red, yellow, white and black” to people. In feudal society, color terms are widely used to reflect political status and position, such as “黄袍”，“青衫”，“白衣” but there is no thorough study on color at that time. Since the May 4th Movement of 1919, more and more Chinese scholars have carried out the studies on color terms but in the early time the study still focused on the Chinese color terms.
As early as in the 1940s, literature and exegesis experts have already analyzed the production and development of five color words in ancient Chinese characters—white, vermilion, yellow, black, green. In 1964, Zhang Peiji published his book English Onomatopoeia Words & Color Terms and Their Translation, making a detailed description of the usage of almost all the English color terms and their translation. In the late 1970s, foreign linguistics theories poured into China with the Opening-up. Wu Tieping in his two articles, Probing Into Fuzzy Language and Re-probing Into Fuzzy　Language , introduced the concept of fuzzy language, in which color terms as a phenomenon of fuzzy language drew the attention of scholars. Later, many scholars conducted researches by comparing the color terms between Chinese and other languages, aiming at finding the differences in language and culture and contributing to the intercultural communication. The study on color terms went further and reached its peak in the 1990s.
The studies were conducted in the following aspects:
(1) Development of basic color terms: for example, Yao Xiaoping’s article On the Theories of Basic Color Terms: The Evolution of Chinese Basic Color Terms (1988) was a summary of the theories of basic color terms, giving a review of the development of basic color terms.
(2) Comparison of color terms between different languages, and their connotations, functions, translation as well as the relationship between the color words and culture: for instance, Shao Zhihong’s The Contrast of English and Chinese Color Terms lays emphasis on the cultural connotation between English and Chinese, Zhang Peiji’s The Use and Translation of Color Terms in English and Chinese , which translates color terms from the perspective of culture.
To sum up, the studies of color words at home and abroad are conducted mainly in the following areas: (1) color terms in philosophy; (2) the quantity of basic color words and its order in different languages; (3) semantic study on color words; (4) the study of grammar, rhetoric and cultural meaning on color words; (5) the comparative study on translation and cultural meaning of color words.
From all above, since there’s no thorough study on basic color terms from the aspect of cultural connotation, it’s significant to make a contrast of basic color terms in cultural connotation between English and Chinese, with which we can get a good knowledge of the discrepancies between English and Chinese and conquer obstacles existing in cross-culture. At first, it may benefit those beginners who are learning some idioms and expressions about color terms a lot with cultural connotation. Furthermore, when taking the discrepancies between English and Chinese of basic color terms into consideration, translators can live up to the criterion of translation—faithfulness, smoothness and gracefulness in a better way. Last but not at least, with the contrast between English and Chinese basic color words, cross-communication can be furthered in a smooth way.

1. Overview of Color Terms and Culture

Human beings share similar sense perceptions of color despite differences in color terminology from one language to another. The physiology of human eyes is essentially the same. People all over the world can see subtle gradations of color and can comprehend other ways of dividing up the spectrum of visible light. However, as economy and technology increase in complexity, the number of color terms usually also increases. It is important to figure out the classification of color, color terms, basic color terms and the relationship between them.

1.1 Comprehension of Color, Color Terms and Basic Color Terms

Color has long been an interest and a concern for human beings. Earlier pursuits of color vision and color perception can be traced back to ancient times. Color is a natural phenomenon which exists in every corner of the human environment. It is a part of perception and experience of all human being towards the outside world. However, it is only the result of classification by mankind or, to put it more exactly, the result of high-tech processing. Color, in its natural state, possesses continuity like long colored ribbon. It is terribly difficult to separate a piece of ribbon from which part is red, which part is orange, which part is yellow. Color itself is an abstract concept and a vague sense. Later, with the evolution of modern civilization, people divided their visual image into different parts and added labels to them, which are languages virtually [1]. Then the ribbon became a substance composed of concrete and separate segments.
There are numerous substances on the planet of earth, each of which possesses distinctive color. Color terms are used to show colors of all sorts, so color term is a recognized symbol describing each color in the world. [2] Color terms are of utmost importance to all nations and people. On one side, they are reflections of understandings to natural environment. Generally speaking, “red” is used to describe sun, fire and blood; “green” is used to describe vegetables and plants; while “blue” is for sky and sea. On the other side, the color terms are satisfied to meet the need for different nations and people so as to show their outlook, perceptions, philosophy, economic and political stand. Different color terms are loaded with different cultural connotations. For all languages, different words are created to identify particular colors. But to pinpoint colors, there’s a special subset of these color words, known as b