摘要

每个民族的语言都拥有自己的颜色词体系。英、汉语分属两种不同的语系，受文化特殊性的影响，人们对颜色词的感受和赋予颜色词的意义也各不相同。中西方基本颜色词的差异和相似处是本文主要讨论的问题，作者使用了许多具代表性的例子贯穿全文。本文从介绍颜色词的定义、背景及文化入手，着重分析了黑白颜色词，并进而讨论了基本颜色词在跨文化交际中的运用。

关键词：基本；颜色词； 差异；相似处；文化

Abstract

Every nation’s language has its own color word system. English and Chinese belong to two different families of language. Affected by the features of culture, people have different impression about color words and endow them different meanings. The differences and similarities of basic color words between Chinese and English are the main issues discussed in this thesis. Besides, many representative examples are used in this paper. This paper starts from introducing color words’ definition, background and culture. It focuses on analyzing white and black, and discusses the usage of basic color words in cross-cultural communication.

Key words:  basic; color words; differences; similarities; culture

1 Introduction

The colorful world is full of different kinds of colors. Human’s life has a close connection with color, because there are a large number of color words. For the basic color words, there is difference between English and Chinese. In Chinese, there are 赤、橙、黄、绿、青、蓝、紫, while in English there are red, white, black, green, yellow, blue and purple. By discussing the differences and similarities of basic color words between Chinese and English, this thesis aims to help people to understand each other in the cross-cultural communication.

1.1 Definition of Color Words
To satisfy daily needs, 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. Human’s eyes are able to distinguish seven million different colors, but most of them can not be named. “From the scientific definition, color is a kind of visual phenomenon which is launched, reflected or caused through certain light wave by the object; it is one kind of visual essential features of human eyes” (Yu Guofang 2007: 10). Color is a very imperative part of human’s knowledge and it is concerned with people’s life closely, carrying rich cultural connotations. It obviously bears functions of aesthetic sense and rich messages. “According to the famous BK Hypothesis—Berlin and Kay consider that all languages include two to eleven basic colors, which are black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, gray” (Zhang Xiaonan 2002: 196). Owing to the different historic and cultural background of the two cultures, the same color words have different symbolic meanings.