摘要：

我们生活在一个五彩缤纷的世界里，颜色词渗透于我们生活的方方面面，并且被赋予了丰富的文化内涵。英语和汉语同为具有悠久历史的语言，都有它们各自的基本颜色词。由于民族之间不同的社会、历史、宗教等原因，英语和汉语的许多基本颜色词反映了各自民族的颜色取向、社会心理、风俗习惯、宗教信仰等文化特点。随着近年来中西方交流的不断加深，人们日益意识到具有深刻文化内涵的基本颜色词必然成为跨文化交际的一个障碍。为了帮助人们扫清这种障碍，作者选择了中英基本颜色词不同文化内涵差异进行研究。
本文以“跨文化交际理论”为理论基础。采用对比分析的方法，重点分析研究红、黑、白、绿、蓝和黄等基本颜色词文化内涵，运用跨文化交际的理论分析中西方颜色表达词汇的文化内涵差异并分析产生这些差异的深层原因。

关键词：基本颜色词；文化内涵；差异；跨文化交际；原因

Abstract:

We live in a colorful world. The color terms scatter every field in our daily life and are given rich cultural connotations. As is well known, both English and Chinese are languages with a very long history and all have numerous color terms. Because of the different society, history, religion and so on, many basic color terms both in English and Chinese reflect different cultural characteristics, such as social psychology, customs and religious belief. As the exchanges and communications between China and Western countries have become increasingly frequent, people began realizing that the color terms which have rich cultural connotations may become an obstacle for cross-cultural communication inevitably. In order to help people to remove this obstacle, the author chose discrepancies of cultural connotations between Chinese and English color terms to research.
This paper was based on the theory cross-cultural communication theory. The author used the comparative method to compare the discrepancies of cultural connotations of some basic color terms, such as Hong(红) and Red, Hei(黑) and Black, Bai(白) and White, Lv(绿) and Green, Lan(蓝) and Blue , Huang(黄) and Yellow, meanwhile he used the cross-cultural communication theory to explain the reasons for these discrepancies.

Key words: basic color terms; cultural connotations; discrepancies; cross-cultural communication;causes

1. Introduction
   1.1 Research purpose and research significance
As an indispensable part of vocabulary system, color terms scatter every field in our daily life and are given rich cultural connotations. As is well known, both English and Chinese are languages with long history and all have numerous color terms. Because of the different society, history, religion and so on, many basic color terms both in English and Chinese reflect different characteristics, such as social psychology, customs and religious belief. With the development of China’s economy and society, the exchanges and communications between China and Western countries have become increasingly frequent, meanwhile people began realizing that the color terms which have rich cultural connotations may become an obstacle for cross-cultural communication inevitably. In order to help people to remove this obstacle, the author chose discrepancies of cultural connotations between Chinese and English color terms to research.