英汉颜色词对比研究-以红色和黄色为例_英语论文

A comparative and contrastive study on red and yellow in English and Chinese

摘要

颜色是人们生活不可缺少的元素。英汉两种语言都富有表达不同颜色的词汇。色彩具有丰富的情感和文化内涵。由于文化背景的差异，人们对颜色的认识和表达是不同的，尤其是红色和黄色。本文通过研究所获材料中的例子，对中英两种语言中的红黄两种颜色的语义进行对比和比较研究。本文研究的意义是让语言学习者意识到在中英两种语言中中红黄两种颜色的语义存在着相似性和差异性。相似性和差异性都是由于认知基础和文化差异造成的。理解了英汉两种语言中红黄语义的相似性和差异性将有助于跨文化交流和翻译实践。

本文分为六章。第一章简述了本文的主要内容。第二章回顾了一些有关中英两种语言中颜色的研究。第三、四章分别讨论了红色和黄色在中英两种语言中的用法的相似性和差异性。第五章讨论了导致中英红黄颜色词汇用法存在相似性和差异性的原因。第六章总结本文。

关键词：认知语言学 概念意义 象征意义 颜色词 

Abstract

Color is an essential element in people’s life. Both English and Chinese are rich in words which are used to express different kinds of color. The color is endowed with plentiful emotion and cultural connotation. Due to the respective cultural background, people’s understanding and expression to the color are not the same, especially the color of red and yellow. This paper is to make a comparative and contrastive study of the sense of red and yellow in English and Chinese by studying the examples collected from all the materials available. The aim of this paper is to make language learners be aware that there exist similarity and difference of the sense of red and yellow in English and Chinese. Both similarity and difference are attributed to cognitive basis and cultural difference. A good understanding of the similarity and difference of the sense of red and yellow in English and Chinese can promote cross-culture communication and translation practice. 

This paper is divided into six parts. The first chapter gives a brief introduction of this paper. The second chapter reviews some studies on color terms in English and Chinese. The third chapter discusses the semantic similarities and differences of red in English and Chinese. The fourth chapter discusses the semantic similarities and differences of yellow in English and Chinese. The fifth chapter discusses the reasons for the semantic similarities and differences of red and yellow in English and Chinese. The sixth chapter gives a brief conclusion of this paper.

Key words: cognitive linguistics conceptual meaning symbolic meaning color terms