an-exploration-into-connotative-difference-between-chinese-and-english-color-words--中英颜色词文化内.doc

毕 业 论 文

论文题目 中英颜色词文化内涵差异研究
系 别 英语系
专 业 英语外贸
年 级 2011级
学 号 201124062103
学生姓名
指导教师
完成时间 2015 年 4 月

肇庆学院教务处制

An Exploration into Connotative Difference between Chinese and English Color Words

A Thesis
Submitted to the School of Foreign Languages of
Zhaoqing University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Bachelor of English
By:
Deng Xianwen
Supervisor：Li Tong
April 2015

学术诚信声明

本人所呈交的毕业论文，是在指导教师的指导下独立完成。研究工作所取得的成果、数据、图片资料均真实可靠。除文中已注明引用的内容外，不包含任何其他人或集体已经发表或撰写过的作品或成果。对本论文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确的方式标明。本毕业论文的知识产权归属于培养单位。本人完全意识到本声明的法律结果由本人承担。

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Abstract
Language is the essential component and representation of national culture, which was created and developed via hosting its own culture features in the process of historical development. Color words are the indispensable part of national culture as well. Territory, custom, politics, religion and value difference results in connotative meanings of color words difference between Chinese and English culture.
The paper is focus on analyzing the explanation and cultural connotation of color words “Red”, “Green” and “Blue” as follow. Firstly, it introduces the Sapir Wolfe hypothesis as well as the Berlin and Kay basic color theory. Then the similarities and difference description and cultural connotation of Chinese and English basic color words “Red”, “Green” and “Blue” are presented. The third is the causes of cultural similarities and difference of the three color words. Including the difference between natural environment, tradition and customs, philosophic and religious views. Last but not least, the enlightenment from the contrast that the interaction of color words connotation and cultural influence is what causes the similarities and difference among them.

Key words: basic color words “Red”, “Green” and “Blue”; cultural connotation similarities and difference; causes; interaction

内容摘要
各民族在其历史发展过程中创造和发展起来的具有本民族的特点文化，称为民族文化，而语言既是民族文化的重要组成部分，也是民族文化的表现形式。颜色词是民族文化中不可或缺的一部分，因为地域、风俗、政治、宗教以及价值观等方面的不同，中英文化中对应的颜色词也代表不同意义，以至于基本颜色词常会引起误解。
本文对比总结“红、绿、蓝”在英汉中的阐释及与文化内涵，作出了以下的分析：首先，叙述了萨皮尔﹒沃夫假说以及柏林与凯伊基本色彩理论作为论述依据；其次，对比分析中英共有的基本颜色词“红、绿、蓝描述及其文化内涵共性与差异；然后，从中英文化共性与差异上分析“红、绿、蓝”文化差异形成的原因，包括自然环境差异、传统与习俗差异、哲学观差异和宗教差异；最后，做出总结分析，由此得出颜色词内涵与文化相互影响相互渗透是其产生异同的深层原因的启示。

关键词：基本颜色词“红、绿、蓝”；文化内涵共性与差异；原因；相互影响渗透

Outline
Thesis Statement: This thesis analyses the cultural similarities and difference between Chinese and English basic color words “Red”, “Green” and “Blue” on the basis of Sapir Wolfe hypothesis as well as the Berlin and Kay basic color theory, and points out the necessity and significance of it. Also, the paper analyzes the causes of similarities and difference between those color words which causes interaction between different culture .
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Basis
2.1 Sapir Wolfe Hypothesis
2.2 Berlin and Kay’s Theory of Basic Color Words
3. Cultural Connotations Study on Color Words between Chinese and English
3.1 Common Color Words “Red”, “Green” and “Blue” in Chinese and English
3.2 Cultural Connotations Similarities and Difference between Color Words “Red”, “Green” and “Blue” of Chinese and English
3.2.1 Color Word ‘Red’/“红”
3.2.2 Color Word ‘Green’/“绿”
3.2.3 Color Word ‘Blue’/“蓝”
4. Contrast of Cultural Connotation Causes between Chinese and English Color Words
41 Causes of Chinese and English Cultural Connotation Similarities
4.1.1 Cultural Perception
4.1.2 Cultural Experience
4.2 Causes of Chinese and English Cultural Connotation Difference
4.2.1 Nature Environment Difference
4.2.2 Tradition and Customs Difference
4.2.3 Philosophic Difference
4.24 Religious Views Difference
5. Conclusion

Table of Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. Theoretical Basis 2
2.1 Sapir Wolfe Hypothesis 3
2.2 Berlin and Kay’s Theory of Basic Color Words 4
3. Cultural Connotations Study on Color Words between Chinese and English 4
3.1 Common Color Words “Red” “Green” and “Blue” in Chinese and English 5
3.2 Cultural Connotations Similarities and Difference between Color Words “Red”, “Green” and “Blue” of Chinese and English 5
3.2.1 Color Word ‘Red’/“红” 5
3.2.2 Color Word ‘Green’/“绿” 6
4. Contrast of Cultural Connotation between Chinese and English Color Words 8
4.1 Causes of Chinese and English Cultural Connotation Similarities 8
4.1.1 Cultural Perception 9
4.1.2 Cultural Experience 9
4.2 Causes of Chinese and English Cultural Connotation Difference 9
4.2.1 Nature Environment Difference 10
4.2.2 Traditions and Customs Difference 10
4.2.3 Philosophy Difference 10
4.2.4 Religious Views Difference 11
5. Conclusion 12
Bibliography 14

i. IV

1. Introduction
Life is filled with knowledge and can be described with abundant vocabulary to increase the value of it. However, even the talented learners could hardly understand all the meaning of color words when describing mood or issues. For example, I learnt from my high school teacher once describing a lady as follows: “Lucy is a very white lady. She was looking rather green the other day and was in a brown mood when I saw her. I wish she’ll soon be in a pink mood again When classmates read this sentence they were confused though the grammar was precise and vocabulary was simple. The primary causes is that we can’t understand what those color words represent under different cultural backgrounds. Thus, the same color words may indicate different meanings between Chinese and English because language is originated from life and influenced by culture. “There is something behind language and language cannot exit without culture.” (Linguitism:89). The significance of indicating the exact color to describe issues is indispensible.
There are around 7,000,000 different colors exist in the world but only around 3,000 English and 2,300 Chinese color words are generated to be known. As the amazing developing speed of nature and human society ever-growing, it would be even difficult to categorize the color words into clear-cut types. Even though, researchers have divided color words into two categories: basic color and object color. In this essay we just analyze three basic color words “Red”, “Green” and “Blue” in contrast views.
Since Plato did systematic researches on color words thousands of years ago, many researchers fellow his path to complete the study. According to Berlin and Kay’s basic color theory, eleven colors are concluded in English of basic color words, and they are white, black ,blue, orange, purple, pink, green, red, brown, yellow and grey. Based on Berlin and Kay’s theory, Chinese professor Yao Xiaoping and Liu Danqing have done a deep research on Chinese color characters and they divided color words as follow characters: 黑，白，红，黄，绿，青，紫，粉红，灰，褐，橙. Therefore it appears eleven basic color words and we only contrast three of them which are red/红，green/绿and blue/蓝.
There are five chapters in the essay. Chapter One is the general introduction of the whole essay. Chapter Two will focus on theoretical basis from Sapir Whorf hypothesis as well as Berlin and Kay’s theory on color words. The first assumption is aiming at stating the relations between language and culture which provides the real meaning when basic color words are used in a specific language situation. The later indicates the color group that divided scientifically. Three pairs of basic color words “red/红，green/绿，blue/蓝” will be contrasted in Chapter Three in English and Chinese in common. It also make contrast of basic color words’ similarities and dissimilarities in this chapter. Chapter Four indicates the reason why basic color words includes of initial similarities and differences. Last but not least, the effect of color words symbolize in daily life are put forward in an essential place.
2. Theoretical Basis
Color word study has been continued for a long period. Not until the eighteenth century did two contrasting philosophy theories about the development of the color system of a given language come into being. In the meanwhile, two questions about color word study were put forwarded by Professor Yang Yonglin as following:
(1)Is the color-coding system of a language linguistically universal and semantically evolutionary?
(2)Is it something linguistically relative and semantically culture-determined? (杨永林 20002b:4)
Therefore, in order to due with the two questions, two relative theories were developed to full fill the contrastive study of cultural connotations of English and Chinese basic color words. They are Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as well as Berlin & Kay’s theory of basic color words.
2.1 Sapir Wolfe Hypothesis
During the nineteenth century, color words are considered to have the nature of linguistic relativity and semantic culture-peculiarity. There states two opposite assumption that on the one hand, the “civilized” society in Europe acknowledged more on color words’ definition and meanings than the “primitive” society while on the other hand disagreed.
However, two splendid American anthropologists and linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf made great progress on the hypotheses concerning language, thought and culture. Whether language could help assisting the method of thinking and different languages may being able to express the unique way of understanding the world as following two points of the theory:
(1)Language may determine our thinking patterns.
(2)Similarities between languages are relative, the greater their structural differentiation is, the more diverse their conceptualization of the world will be.
In fact, during to the exaggeration of influence of language on human beings’ thought and other ways, not much linguists could accept the first theory. Not until early 1920s to the late 1960s did the theory is widely accepted.
However, the road to success is always full of thorns. Though Sapir-Whorf hypothesis made a great effort on the study of the relationships between language and thought, language and culture, some linguists questioned degree of influences as well as the possibilities that people have common thoughts of the world.
The importance of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which made great progress on the development of the relationship between language and thought can not be denied. However, more scholars chose to believe the study on color words is the typical cross-cultural example to prove linguistic relativism. Not until 1960s when Berlin and Kay assumed that it is linguistic universality and semantic evolution that characterize the system of color words in general did the theory been mostly accepted by scientists of related study fields.
2.2 Berlin and Kay’s Theory of Basic Color Words
Seventy years after the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was put forward, two linguists Berlin and Kay published their seminal and classic book on the study of relevant field, Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Four basic criteria are divided to judge whether a color word is basic or not in a given language as following:
(1)The meaning of color word cannot be speculated from itself.
(2)Its meaning doesn’t contain that of any other color words.
(3)Its application should be wide, not just restricted to a special kind of objects.
(4)It must be psychologically salient for informants. Indices of psychological salience include: ①a tendency to occur at the beginning of elicited lists of color words;②stability of reference across in formants and across occasions of use, and③occurrence in the idiolects of all informants. (from Berlin and Kay 1969:6)
Focus on those principles, Berlin and Kay made an conclusion that there are different numbers of basic color words in different languages after investigating ninety-eight languages. Eleven basic color words are distinguished through different languages. They also established the set of principles mentioned above to judge the distributional restrictions of color words in a given language to help explaining the relationships between language and words.
3. Cultural Connotations Study on Color Words between Chinese and English
Having discussed the history of studies on color words and two foundational theories on the last two chapters, with the way of contrastive compare on cultural connotations of English and Chinese basic color words will be described in the third chapter.
3.1 Common Color Words “Red”, “Green” and “Blue” in Chinese and English
According to the theoretical basis above, we focus on discussing three group of color words in Chinese and English which are Red/红，Green/绿，Blue/蓝.
In fact, cultural connotation has no precise definition. We will mainly discus the metaphorical meaning, associative meaning, symbolic meaning, emotional meaning and other extended meanings of basic color words.
As for the researches on related filed, Geoffrey Leech has proposed that the meaning of a word consists of seven types: conceptual meaning, thematic meaning, connotative meaning, stylistic meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning and connotative meaning. The last five meaning are called associative meaning cause they are all open-ended, indeterminate. (Leech.1987:21-23)
In the meanwhile, Chinese linguist Zhu Guangqian also pointed out that a character has associative meanings and contextual meanings besides its literal meaning.
3.2 Cultural Connotations Similarities and Difference between Color Words “Red”, “Green” and “Blue” of Chinese and English
According to the general introduction of basic color words Red/红，Green/绿，Blue/蓝 above, in the following pages we are going to contrast the three pairs of color words specifically in two languages. Both similarities and difference will be discuss in each chapters.
3.2.1 Color Word ‘Red’/“红”
Color Red “红” is the favorite color of Chinese nations and became the culture symbolization and spirit reliance of people in China. For a long period of time in Chinese history, people usually connect “红” as good luck, happiness, generous, vitality, elegance, etc. For example, ancient people made walls and doors into red color as well as cabinets, they dressed their babies with red bellyband（红肚兜） and covered the bride with red veil（红盖头）. Everywhere is in red when Chinese new year’s coming. “春联” which means Spring festival scrolls, “窗花”which indicates windows paper, “鞭炮” named as firecracker and lucky money put into a red envelop called“大红包”, etc. None of those are not in red color symbolizing good fortune.
Except for the celebrating meaning in Spring festival of “红”, it also symbolizes embarrassed, shy or danger. For example, “眼红” means jealousy; “脸红” means shy; “亮红灯” shows danger or prohibition. Apart from