Symbolism of Colors in English 英语毕业论文.doc

symbolism of colors in english abstract: there are so many words to convey different colors in english. we should pay attention to not only their basic meaning, but also their deeply symbolized meaning. they express different meaning owing to different cultures. in western society, colors have their exotic symbolized meaning. this is a permanent cultural phenomenon. in the thesis, the author discusses the symbolic meaning of five basic colors: red, white, black, yellow and green, and the background of the symbolic meaning of each color. color is very close to peoples life. it is important for people to understand the world. colors not only have physical character, but also have rich intension and stretchy meanings. people of different nations often have different feeling about the same color as a result of their different cultural and historical background. so colors show differences between different cultures. the author discusses seven main reasons that lead to the differences of colors symbolic meaning between chinese and western culture, such as different political systems, different historic vicissitudes, different cultural tradition and custom, different habits of thinking and way of expressing, different natural environments and living standards, different mentality, different emotion. these words are used frequently and have plenty of sentiment. what should pay more attention to is that because of the differences between different nationalities and cultural background, or different social classes, each color has its special meaning. it is active in terms of linguistics. that endows color words with associative meaning.key words：color; meaning; symbolismintroduction there are so many symbols in human languages to convey colors. we use these words frequently. they are endowed with abundant emotive color and cultural connotation consequently. what is worthy of paying attention to is that during inter-cultural communication, because of differences between different nationalities, cultural background, social group or social estate, each group has their own apperceive on symbols of colors. these differences have an active significance, and it possess colors with manifold associational meaning.1 . the analysis of the symbolic meanings of 5 basic colors1.1 red colorred is one of the original colors of human being. it make us think of blood and fire first. our ancestors have cognizance of blood during their long-lasted struggle against the nature, and realized that blood is the headspring of human lives. therefore, either in chinese or in english, red symbolizes happiness, conviviality and blessedness, and represents benison and celebration. but in chinese, red color has a stronger symbolism meaning than that in western countries. usually, objects used in a wedding are red in china. businessmen wished a good luck when they just go out. it was called “ see red color when you open the door” in chinese. on a set-up ceremony, chinese people use a great lot of red silk. seniorities send juniors red paper bag with gift money on lunar new year. at this time, every family stick spring festival scrolls wrote on red paper on their doors. at the end of a year, every company would give their dormant partners melon-cutting. that indicates the consummation of the past year and a favoring start of the coming year. there also has similar expression in english. for example: a red letter day means a memorialized date; red-blooded means strong and nerved; red-hot miracle means a surprise result, such as a horse which has won a match; the red carpet means welcome warmly.however, in western world, red also used as a derogatory term, indicating bloodiness, fanaticism adversity and danger. such as: red hands means bloody hands or hands killed somebody; be caught red-handed means was caught at locale; red-ruin means disaster of war; red revenge means bloody revenge or killed somebody in a revenge; red-light district means a neighborhood containing many brothels and so on.red also symbolizes radicalness and violent revolution. such as: red-hot political campaign means aboil political movement, a red revolution, red activities and a red adventure story. when the oriflamme of bolsheviks uprising at lenins hometown and marxism leninism spread in china, “red” which symbolizes revolution fixed with the chinese favoritism of red color. thereby “red” symbolized revolution and was endowed a political meaning, for example: red army, red flag, red and expert means both socialist-minded and professional qualified. literature works based on revolution were named titles contain the word “red”, such as novels the red band of the earth, the red sun and red star over china.red symbolizes loyal. we call person who loyal to the country and people “a red person” and they have a “red heart” in ancient time. we still use “a red heart” to describe a person loyal to the communist party. in china opera, the hero guan yu wears a red mask to symbolize his loyal to the king liu bei.1.2 white colorwhite is a derogatory term on conventional chinese conception. it symbolizes “poor and beggarliness”. in ancient time, chinese call person without an official title “white-dressed”, and call their botchy a white hutch. all of this made us associates the word white with beggarliness and poor. in conventional chinese culture, funeral always based on a white accordatura. because chinese regards the pass-away of relatives or friends is one of the saddest events, they should only wear the simplest white cloths without any decoration to express their sadness and their lament to the person who died. thus white became the symbol of funeral during a long time development of chinese society.however , white symbolizes sunshine, and stands for a meaning of nicety, hope and happiness. in the holy bible, white symbolizes the god, angels, happiness and excellence. they use white hands to describe an honest person, a white knight to express a political reformer or a person who was succeeded in his career. people in western countries regarded white color pure, chaste and elegant, so the western culture advocates white color. for example, a white soul describes an immaculate soul, white wedding to express a wedding which the bride wore a white wedding dress. there is a beautiful girl in western fame was called snow white, she represents beauty, wisdom and kindness. in the u.s, the building symbolized the highest power was called “white house”. ancient greek and roman used white offering to hold a memorial ceremony for gods. according to the holy bible, all the offering israelis used to memory the god are white. so white color has a favonian meaning. lily-white means a kind of pure white like lilies. lilies represent chastity and cleanness. it is said that eve, the primogenitor of human being was cried when she was drove out from the garden of eden, and her remorseful tear became lilies.1.3 black colorchinese usually take inclement position as dark night and black clouds from ancient time till now. they usually regard darkness in politics and unjust treatment to an innocent person as calling white black. a lot of word were derived from the word dark, such as black gang and black way means sinister gang, black market, black hearted and so on.in western culture, black color symbolizes darkness. in the holy bible, black symbolizes devil, depravity, bitterness and disaster. the black friday means the friday jesus was suffered adversity before easter sunday. it is a sad day. according to the cultural background and traditional consuetude, people in western countries use black friday to represent a catastrophic day or a bodeful day. it also called a scum of a community as a black sheep in the bible. in greek mythology and roman mythology, black indicates azrael, the king of terrors and the soul of a deceased person, so all the cloths wore in funeral are black. black was also called the color of death. this comparison made people feel scared even villainied. such as, a black villain means a bad actor or a bad egg, black flag means a flag used by pirates or a flag symbolizes death, black words means bodeful words, black art means enchantment and theurgy which witches used. in the famous ballet the swan lake, the black swans symbolizes evil, cheat and hatred, but the white swans symbolizes pure, kindness and love.black symbolizes sobriety, stateliness and respect as well as it symbolizes death, evil and disaster. black suit and black dress is the most advocated dress regarded by westerners. on grand occasions, high officials and four hundreds like wear black clothes. members of symphony orchestras are all in black to show grandeur.1.4 yellow coloryellow color is the symbol of chinese. yellow is the most divine and noblest color in chinese culture. it was regarded as the true qualities of chinese people. all the chinese people are yellow skinned. they drink the water of yellow river, and they till the yellow soil. it is said that one of the chinese primogenitor the yellow emperor xuan yuan usually wore yellow gown and yellow coronal, so he was called the yellow emperor. yellow is an exalted color; it symbolizes imperial power, dominion and value. in ancient time, the almanac that was authorized by the emperor was called yellow almanac. ascend the throng also called wear the yellow gown. as a result, emperors of all the past dynasties canonized yellow color as the color of emperor.in modern chinese, yellow is a derogatory term. it made us think of lavatorial indelicacy four-letter culture or some books, periodicals, works, songs, pictures and discs which have something to do with sex. actually this piece of meaning has nothing to do with the conventional chinese culture, it came from american english. in 19th century, american newspaper the new york paper in order to held a competition with another american newspaper the new york world. the new york paper expressed a caricatured column that was named yellow kid. because the new york paper printed the column on yellow paper that is in a low quality, their rival the new york world satirized the column as yellow journalism which is lavatorial. the word yellow in yellow journalism does not have the meaning of obscenbce and pornographic, but in the meaning of lavatorial. we usually use the word blue to describe bawdry and indelicacy, such as blue movie means erotic movie, blue talk means indecent talk, blue revolution means erotic revolution.in english culture, yellow color makes person think about judas who betrayed jesus. what he wore was in yellow. in ancient france, people usually paint the doors of betrayers to yellow. in the history of western countries, the so-called gentiles usually wear yellow clothes, handle yellow crosses and yellow candles. so yellow color always has a derogatory symbolic meaning, such as somber, diseased, disgusting and cowardly and so forth. we call a despicable person as a yellow dog, a caitiff as a yellow-belly, a doleful and unbelieving expression as a yellow look. and we also use yellow-livered to describe cowardly.american usually use yellow paper to print telephone numbers, we call it yellow pages. it is different from the word yellow which has a derogatory sense. it only stands for the classification of telephone numbers. the sanitation record of internet quarantine also use a yellow cover, we call it yellow book which has noting to do with canonize or derogate.1.5 green color green color symbolizes peace, friendliness, hope and vital force. no matter in chinese or in english, green has the same symbolic meaning. green made person think of the peace and serenity of the great nature. green food is the most famous word used by merchants to advertise their product. we use a green winter to describe a winter not so cold, a green old age to describe hale and hearty old person, in the green wood to describe an age of energy and verdure, in the green to describe hot-blooded and so on.in the conventional culture of western countries, green symbolizes envy as well as it symbolizes youth and vital force. it is rooted from othello the play of shakespeare. it is sail that, “ o! beware, my lord, of jealousy. it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock. the meat is feeds on” so green was endowed with an explicate meaning of jealous. such as green with envy means filled with jealous. besides that green also has a meaning of baby acted, inexperienced, childish, such as a green horn means an addlehead with any experience, a green hand means a tenderfoot, as green as grass means infantility. this kind of saying also reflected in chinese such as we call a junior without any experience as a green head.in chinese, green also means because of the unchastity of the wife, the husband should be punished. in tang dynasty, the word green was used as a kind of punishment in a piece of law. a person lived in tang dynasty who was named feng yan said in his book which was named the sketch book of feng that a person was punished by wearing a green kerchief on his head instead of punishing by beating him. in yuan dynasty, the official institutions of yuan dynasty said that the male relative of a prostitute has to wear a green muffle.the peoples liberation army of chinese was called the green great wall. it is a special piece of meaning only can be found in chinese, it is because that the uniform of the peoples liberation army is green. the green color of national defence, the green color of the army has become the special meaning of chinese.the differences between different cultures would conduce different cultural modality. once this cultural modality was reflected to the lays language, it was behaved as the differences of language. in respect that, color words which were give birth by the social culture crowned different meanings because of the different background the color words came into being.2 the differences of color words between chinese and english from the following seven aspects2.1 different political systems lead to the differencesbecause of the different political and economy system of each nationality, different colors are used to represent political junta and characteristic of their own system. and this lasted for a very long time form ancient till now. such as in english, the true blue means members who loyal to their own party, especially indicate the stubborn british tories; white paper or blue paper means the blue-covered or white-covered proces-verbal or diplomatic writ delivered by british or the u.s government. however, the green paper means the draft bulletin provided to all kinds of committees to discuss.2.2 different historic vicissitudes lead to the differencesdifferent nationalities have respective historic vicissitudes and religion believes. so they have respective cultural deposition and cultural accumulation. this habit and convention acted on colors and led to different effects.for example, in the thousands years of ancient feudalistic chinese society, yellow was regarded as the symbol of imperial power. the so-called wear a yellow gown means the status of an emperor, come into ones kingdom also use the word yellow in chinese. so yellow color was looked as if it is an imperatorial, kingly, gloried color. all the expressions above contain blatant component. as time passed, yellow color was endowed a special meaning of lavatorial, indecent books, songs, magazines and discs have something to do with sex. such as yellow discs, yellow magazine and so on. in these expressions, the word yellow was dependent of the meaning of yellow color in english. we use pornographic, vulgar, obscence to express the special meaning in chinese.western countries also uses yellow color to represent a given object. in the u.s, taxis usually have a mark of the word yellow instead of the word taxi; it is because that most of taxies there are yellow. the word yellow indicates a taxi there. however the word blue was often used as the symbol of pornographic and vulgar materials. such as blue jokes, blue films and so force. in western countries, purple color was the symbol of imperial power. wear a purple gown means raised to an eminent degree. so purple was compared with kingship. we often say that to rise to purple means to rise to the status of a cardinal, to be born in the purple means to be born in a family of monarch, to marry into the purple also has this meaning.2.3 different cultural tradition and custom lead to the differencesin conventional chinese conception, white color is the symbol of sad ness. once held a funeral, everyone attend the funeral should wear white clothes. however in western countries, white color symbolizes peace and chastity. the bride wears white wedding dress when she married to express the chastity love between she and her husband. white christmas means a peaceful christmas. there are some expressions in chinese contain the word white, but they have nothing to do with the meaning of peace. such as plain boiled water, polar bear, chinese cabbage, wrongly written or mispronounced character, idiot, no use and so on. contrarily, we also describe a person good-for-nothing as a white elephant, a lie without any hostility as a white lie, coffee contains milk as white coffee, a kind-hearted person as a white man and so on. in english, some object got its name from its own color, such as white goods symbolizes large bulked or expensive wiring, white money means coins and so on.either in chinese or western countries, red color usually means a big day for it often use red digits to express these dates on calendars. as a result, a red-letter day means a festival. however in western countries, red cloth often used to enrage cows when a bullfight was held. the people recepted that red is a dangerous color, for example, they usually say red for danger and a red