On the Cultural Connotation of English and Chinese Color Words 英语专业毕业论文.doc

On the Cultural Connotation of English and Chinese Color Words Abstract: Color words are frequently used, and endowed with plentiful emotion and cultural connotation. This paper is to make a study on the cultural connotation of color words with the purpose of better application of them in cross-cultural communication. First, the paper expresses what color words are and their different division in English and Chinese culture. Second, due to the respective cultural background and tradition, people’s feeling and expression to the color are not the same, so the symbolic meaning of color can produce great differences between Chinese and Western culture. The paper compares the basic color words in English and Chinese and presents the reasons for the differences in color words. At last, it concludes that to use color words properly can avoid the conflicts of different cultures and improve the cross-culture communication. Key Words: color-words; cultural connotation; reasons I. Definition and Classification of Color Words A. The Definition of Color From the scientific definition, color is a visual phenomenon launched, reflected or caused through certain light wave by the object; it is one kind of visual essential features of human eyes. Color is a very important area of people’s world knowledge and it concerned with people’s life closely, carrying basic attributes of physics and rich cultural connotations. It bears obvious functions of beautiful sense and rich messages. B. Basic Color Words in the English and Chinese Culture Color words are the terms that describe all kinds of color which is used to description of materials and things. And different color words have different meanings in different background of national culture. So there are many kinds of color words with different kinds of meanings in English and Chinese. However, on the basic color words, there is not so much difference in English and in Chinese. In English there are red, white, black, gre