A Study of Connotation of Color Words in English and Chinese Cultures 英语专业毕业论文.docVIP

A Study of Connotation of Color Words in English and Chinese Cultures [Abstract]Language is a kind of appearance of culture and it is the products of the social culture development. No language could be alive and develop without a social environment. The vocabulary is the most active factor in the language, and the meaning of color words in the vocabulary is abundant. Color is closely related to peoples life. In human language, the color words are frequently used and endowed with plentiful emotion and cultural connotation. We should pay attention to not only their own basic meaning, but also their deeper symbolic meaning. Because of different cultural issues, cultural tradition and culture psychology, the cultural connotations of the English and Chinese color words differ greatly as a result, these particular cultural connotation meanings are cast under different environments by different nationalities. We can have more perfect command of the two language and make better cultural communication on the base of understanding their differences. The definition of color Color words, in whatever languages, are words used for describing the colors of different kinds of things. Different nationalities have no difference in color esthesia or in the ability to correctly distinguish colors. Though some similarities exist when words are used in English and Chinese, there are more differences due to both the language and the cultural factors such as history, culture, customs and traditions. Basic color worsd in Chinese and English cultures In the colorful world, different languages may have different number of color terms. In Chinese 赤,橙,黄,绿,青,蓝,紫, the seven colors in the rain bow, are thought to be the basic colors. However, in English it is usually considered there are eleven basic colors, namely white, black, grey, brown, red, green, yellow, blue, purple, orange, and pink. Owing to the different historic cultural background of the two cultures, the same color words have