Abstract:

This paper focuses on a comparative study on the taboo about color between Chinese and English. First, a large number of examples are used to compare and analyze the taboo about color in red, white, black and blue between Chinese and English. Then, the reasons for the differences of taboo about color between Chinese and English are analyzed through three aspects, including religion, culture and history. This paper aims to make people of different cultural backgrounds correctly grasp the taboo on color, reduce unnecessary misunderstanding due to the differences of Chinese and western languages and cultures and make cross-cultural communication effective.

Key words: taboo; taboo on color; cross-cultural communication

摘要:

本文关注汉英颜色禁忌语的对比研究。首先通过大量实例分别对汉英语言中的红、白、黑、蓝四种颜色禁忌进行了对比分析，然后从宗教、文化与历史等三个方面分析汉英颜色禁忌差异的原因。本文旨在让不同文化背景下的人们能够正确掌握颜色禁忌语，减少由于东西方语言文化差异引起的不必要误会，从而有效实现跨文化交际。

关键字: 禁忌语；颜色禁忌；跨文化交际

1. Introduction
In recent years, with the rapid development of science and technology, our living world is becoming smaller and smaller, which provides people with a number of opportunities of intercultural communications. During the communication, we should care both languages and cultures in order to communicate with people in different cultures effectively and avoid taboo. There are many color words both in Chinese and English and it accounts for an important part of vocabulary. People in different nations have their own special meanings of different colors. We always pay attention to their literal meanings, but ignore their symbolic meanings. If we know taboo on color, it is very helpful in cross-cultural communication, for it can avoid misunderstanding and enhance friendship. And we should focus on different meanings of colors in different countries.