A Contrastive Study On Cultural Connotations Of Basic Color Terms Between English And Chinese

We live in a colorful world. There are a great variety of color words, or alarge number of expressions denoting the sensation of colors used to describethe colorful things in the world. Although differing in their quantities in thecolor inventory of different languages, basic color terms (black and 黑, whiteand 白, red and 红, yellow and 黄, green and 绿, blue and 蓝, brown and 棕,purple and 紫, and gray and 灰) are important components of almost all thehuman languages. As a group of cultural-loaded words, basic color termsreflect cultural diversities in the aspects such as minds, customary habits aswell as color orientations.English and Chinese, as languages with a long history, are both abundantin basic color terms, and almost all the basic color terms carry their ownpeculiar connotations resulting from different social cultures, historicalprocesses and geographic conditions. With the deepening of the cross-culturalcommunication between China and the western world, it has been realized thatbasic color terms form an area in which misunderstanding in cross-culturalcommunication seems inevitable because of the diversities of their culturalconnotations. Therefore, a contrastive study on cultural connotations of basiccolor terms between English and Chinese is of significance.This thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One is the generalintroduction in which it defines "basic color terms"and "culturalconnotations", and discusses the possibility and necessity for writing thisthesis. Chapter Two generalizes the previous study in the field of colorperception and color terms. Chapter Three serves as the main body of thisthesis. It explains two theories in studying color terms—Sapir-Whorfhypothesis and Berlin and Kay's theory of basic color terms. In the secondpart of this chapter, a contrastive study is made on the cultural connotations of...