Red and white- the comparison of the connotations of color terms in English and Chinese 红与白-中西方的颜色词内涵对比.doc

Red and white- the comparison of the connotations of color terms in English and Chinese 红与白-中西方的颜色词内涵对比 【Abstract】 All people live in the same material world, and the physical mechanism of perception is pretty much the same in all people. However, different peoples from different countries and with different cultural backgrounds have the different feelings to the same color term. Because of their different geographical position, history, religion, custom, psychology and ways of thinking, the implied meanings of the color words are different. There are bunches of color terms in the vocabularies of different countries. They all have deep cultural connotations, besides their literal denotations. In some important occasions, as the main expression of customs, red and white imply different cultural backgrounds. Through the analysis of symbolic meanings of red and white, this thesis puts an emphasis on the national traits of color terms. Approached from four aspects-- environment, perception, philosophy and religion, the study explores the cultural and historical roots of the differences. The purpose of this thesis is to avoid errors in cross-cultural communications based on a better awareness of cultural differences. 【Key Words】 red； white； connotation； causes； color terms； English and Chinese 【摘 要】 人们生活在同一个物质世界，其感知的生理机制使人们对颜色词的理解也不禁相同。但是，不同国家不同文化背景的人对同种颜色的理解也有所不同。这是因为不同的地理环境，历史背景，宗教信仰，文化风俗，心理以及思维方式使颜色词所蕴涵的意义产生差异。在各种语言词汇里有大量的颜色词，除了表达颜色本意之外，它们有更深刻的文化内涵。在中西方的重大场合里，红白两色作为一种重要的风俗表现形式，深刻体现了两种不同的文化背景，本文通过对红白两色基本象征意义的对比分析，强调了英汉颜色词的民族特性，并从环境、感知、哲学和宗教四个方面探索了造成这种差异的文化历史根源。本文研究是为了更好地了解民族文化差异，避免在跨文化交际中产生失误。 【关键词】 红;白;内涵;原因;颜色词;英汉 1. Introduction To satisfy our daily necessities, people use a host of color terms to represent colors. For example, it is estimated that there are over three thousand color words in English. Our eyes are able to distinguish seven million different colors, most of which we cannot name. As we know, color is the physical appearance. Although people are