中英文化下颜色词的不同涵义-文献综述

1、Literature ReviewC10英语（1） 张威We are living in a colorful world where there is a variety of colors permeating every area of our daily life. Color itself is an abstract concept and Color terms are the labels and basic color terms are the prototypes in the different color categories. Basic color terms,

2、magic in expression, are the cultural carriers of different languages. It is clear that each progress of research is closely linked with human civilization. Color terms form a special group of glossary and the special quality of color term has been attracting scholars from home and abroad.Research o

3、n color terms in foreign countries can go back to the ancient Greece and mainly centered in philosophy. In the 17th century, with the emerge of natural science, people studied color and color terms in physics and optics. In the 18th century, the development of philosophy gave rise to the aesthetic s

4、tudy of color words. In the 19th century, the rise of cultural study laid solid foundation for contrasting and comparing color terms from a cross-cultural perspective. From the last century until now, the linguists participation made the notions of the universality of language principles highly valu

5、ed and accepted in the system of color terms. In the recent thirty years, with the development of neurology, biogenetics, cognitive science and cognitive psychology, people are unveiling the complicated relationship in the color terms system, which contributes to better understanding of the internal

6、 and external systems of color words and to further the study of linguistic color terms. 1. Studies on Color in Different Fields in Western CountriesBasic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution by Berlin and Kay suggest that the expression of “basic color terms” does not have a unique operati

7、onal definition, yet they lay out four basic criteria to judge whether a color word is basic or not. In the early 20th century, E. Sapir and B.L. Wholf put forword Language Relative Theory, then Bloomfield carried out Culture Contact Theory, both of which offered a foundation for studying color term

8、s in the frame of language and culture. Influenced by Berlin and Kays publication, basic color terms theory has resulted in great achievements in cross-discipline researches. Berlin and Kay argue that basic color terms in all languages are drawn from a universal inventory of just 11 color categories

9、. According to their theory, every language has between 2and 11 basic color terms and they present a hierarchy which specifies a limited number of evolutionary paths that a language can take when adding new color categories. It points out that among so many color words, we need to find out basic col

10、or terms and do research on these color terms. The crucial thing for us to do is to study the differences between basic color terms in Chinese and English culture. The Study of Colors by Goethe, the noted literary giant, believes that shades of color in nature are related to the sensory attitudes of

11、 human beings. Then, he finds that color categories are processed by the human mind (learned, remembered, denoted and evolved in languages) in terms of their internal structure. Based on the results of experiments and relevant studies, he claims that different psychological states of feeling can be

12、activated by different colors in terms of warmness and coldness. He thinks the colors on the plus side are yellow, red-yellow (orange), yellow-red (minimum, cinnabar). The feelings they excite are quickly, lively. The colors on the minus side are blue, red-blue and blue-red.It is showing that knowin

13、g the different meanings of color words tend to be knowledgeable in other field. It makes us concern things in full perspectives which attribute to make the paper convectively.Cross-cultural Investigation of Color Terms by Magnus in 1880, states that color terms from informants representing differen

14、t cultures in many parts of the world. He holds an assumption that color terms are linguistically relative and semantically culture-specific. The evidence for this assumption in linguistics or semantics is the fact that there is only a few number of basic color terms, which are believed to represent

15、 a higher degree of abstraction and generality. The new theoretical disputes about color terminology, and support the existence of an evolutionary feature in color words by suggesting that primitive people, being in a less developed stages of their color vocabulary, and industrialized people do not

16、have an identical color-sense.It changes peoples view of the relationship between color terminologies and their physiological foundations, and some how predicted the possibility of linguistic universality in color terms. The Study of the Color Lexicon by Lakoff in 1973, claims that women are more li

17、kely than men to use “fancy” or elaborated color words such as mauve, lavender, and beige in English. The sociolinguistic study of the color lexicon can be feasibly taken as being in a complimentary distribution with the completely examined in the sense that both basic and elaborated color terms are

18、 studied, and most important of all, the relationships between the subjects language performance and possible social implications are taken into account. Colorwordscannotonlydescribetheobjectiveviewandthething,italsohastheverystrongmoraleffect,givestheabstractthingsandcharacter,color,makeexpressiona

19、ddedimageofthefigurativemeaning.Thecolorofsimpletoadmiretheordersofthecharactersofsublimationtoconductimageexpressionisthelanguageoftheuniquefunctionofcolorwords.Especiallyincross-culturalcommunicationbecauseofdifferentnationalities,lifecharacteristics,psychologicalactivities,emotion,indifferentdegr

20、ee,wasgiventheculturalinformationconnotation.All mention above about color abroad laid a solid foundation for future study. Meanwhile, they also give significant suggestions and insights to our relative research at home. 2. Studies on Color in Different Fields in Chinese CultureOnomatopoeia Words &

21、Color Terms and Their Translation by Zhang Peiji in 1964, makes a detailed description of the usage of almost all the English color terms and their translation. In China, people perceived several colors and produced as many color terms as possible because of the development of dying and pottery indu

22、stries. Since the May 4th Movement of 1919, more and more Chinese scholars have carried out the studies on color terms but in the early time the study still focused on the Chinese color terms. As early as in the 1940s, literature and exegesis experts have already analyzed the production and developm

23、ent of five color words in ancient Chinese characterswhite, vermilion, yellow, black, green. He makes a detailed description of the usage of almost all the English color terms and their translation. All in all, it lets me know the study of color terms in China, and makes me clearly to compare with t

24、hese different meanings of color words between China and English.Probing Into Fuzzy Language and Re-probing Into FuzzyLanguage by Wu Tieping introduces the concept of fuzzy language, in which color terms as a phenomenon of fuzzy language drew the attention of scholars. Later, many scholars conducted

25、 researches by comparing the color terms between Chinese and other languages, aiming at finding the differences in language and culture and contributing to the intercultural communication. The study on color terms went further and reached its peak in the 1990s. the relationship of color terms and cu

26、lture can be said that culture and language are connected and interwoven with each other. On one hand, color terms function as the carrier of culture and culture is loaded in color terms, through which the material developments, institutional systems, conceptual features and the like of a certain so

27、ciety are recorded, expressed and transmitted. On the other hand, color terms is considerably got influenced and therefore, formed by culture while it also fully reflects culture.It provides me some useful mastery in color words, which helps me a lot in my paper writing. With large materiel, the pap

28、er can be a sense of fulfillment.On the Theories of Basic Color Terms: The Evolution of Chinese Basic Color Terms (1988) by Yao Xiaoping shows a summary of the theories of basic color terms, giving a review of the development of basic color terms. He studies of color words at home and abroad are con

29、ducted mainly in the following areas: (1) color terms in philosophy; (2) the quantity of basic color words and its order in different languages; (3) semantic study on color words; (4) the study of grammar, rhetoric and cultural meaning on color words; (5) the comparative study on translation and cul

30、tural meaning of color words. He puts forward three conditions that must be satisfied in perceiving colorsa light source, an object that reflects the light, and a functional eye that can receive the reflected light. In his opinion, simple colors related to some basic elements in the physical world a

31、nd the nature of colors is assumed that simple colors were mixtures of “black” and “white” (or darkness and light). Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary gives connotation the following definition “an idea suggested by a word in addition to its main meaning”. The definition shows that

32、connotation of a word is different from its main meaning. A word includes not only its main meaning but also its connotation. Therefore, the cultural connotation means the general meaning and connotative meaning of culture, its related to many circumstance, including the social background, emotions

33、and attitudes of people which exist in one culture. Comparison of color terms between different languages, and their connotations, functions, translation as well as the relationship between the color words and culture: for instance, Shao Zhihongs The Contrast of English and Chinese Color Terms lays

34、emphasis on the cultural connotation between English and Chinese, Zhang Peijis The Use and Translation of Color Terms in English and Chinese , which translates color terms from the perspective of culture.It argues that theres no thorough study on basic color terms from the aspect of cultural connota

35、tion, its significant to make a contrast of basic color terms in cultural connotation between English and Chinese, with which we can get a good knowledge of the discrepancies between English and Chinese and conquer obstacles existing in cross-culture. At first, it may benefit those beginners who are

36、 learning some idioms and expressions about color terms a lot with cultural connotation. Furthermore, when taking the discrepancies between English and Chinese of basic color terms into consideration, translators can live up to the criterion of translationfaithfulness, smoothness and gracefulness in

37、 a better way. Last but not at least, with the contrast between English and Chinese basic color words, cross-communication can be furthered in a smooth way. Having read the above literature concerning that though in different cultures, different color terminologies are brought about to identify diff

38、erent colors, it is similar for people in different culture to perceive color more or less the same for the reason that the physiology of human eyes is basically identical. Human beings are all aware of the differences if the ways of dividing up the spectrum of visible light are changing and fully c

39、omprehend the consequences. Of course, with the development of science and technology, the number of color terms usually increases so as to keep up with the “complexity” of those changes. To reflect the interests and concerns of different cultures, there are some differences of color terminologies u

40、sed in different cultures. In order to make the contrast more clearly, at first, an overview of color and culture has been made to find out the definition of color, color terms and culture. Then, make clear the relationship between color terms and culture. The relationship between color terms and cu

41、lture explains why English and Chinese basic color terms share quite a few semantic meanings in common while at the same time they have some distinctive peculiarities. The expressions of color terms reflect the religious psychology and the values held by different people, social background and natur

42、al environment they live in, which are the specific reasons for similarities and differences in color terms between English and Chinese.The study on contrasting cultural connotations of color terms can will not only help beginners how to learn English in an comparative way, but also enlighten teache

43、rs in English teaching with the emphasis of cultural influence. In addition, it also plays an important role to overcome obstacles in the field of translation and cross-cultural communication with the explanation of differences existing in English and Chinese.However, there is still much space to develop in this thesis. For one thing, although many typical