The contrast between Chinese and English in color words 词汇学论文

Thecontrast between Chinese and English in color

words

1.Abstract:What is a word? The perfect definition of word has always beencontroversial. A hundred people a hundred viewpoints. Differentlinguists have different views in word definition. Personally, Iprefer the definition that a word is a minimal free form of alanguage that has a given sound, meaning and syntactic function. Itis agreed that a word is the combination of word-form and itsmeaning.’ form’ refers to both its pronunciation and spelling.’meaning’ is what the form stands for. Linguists study the meaningof words or expressions in different way. Geoffrey Leech pursues thestudy of meaning under seven types: conceptual meaning, connotativemeaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning,collocative meaning, thematic meaning. Different countries, becauseof the different culture or other aspects . The same meaning of wordswill use different form in different country. The same definition ofwords may have different associative meaning. My point here is tocontrast the color’s associative meaning in different cultures. Dueto the cultures’ different, the same color represents differentassociative meaning. Because of the difference in color’associative meaning, many people have always a wrong understanding ofmany

colorwords. Therefore, they sometimes make a foolish figure。Inorder to

reducethese unnecessary misunderstanding and ambiguity, I want to analyzethe different color senses in different cultures (here, I would liketo put the focus on Chinese and English).The method that I will taketo analyze the difference is contrast. With this analytical method,we can see those differences more clearly.

什么是词？最完美的词的定义一直都存在着争议。一百个人就有一百个注意，不同的语言学

家对词的定义有着不同的看法。就我个人而言，我相对比较支持这么一种观点：一个词是语

言中最小的自由的单位,并有声音,意义和句法功能。人们一致认为词是由形式和意义组合而

成。'形式'指的是它的发音和拼写。'意思'是形式所表示的意思。语言学家用不同的方式

来研究词所表达意思。杰弗里根据七个类型来研究词的意义：概念意义，内涵意义，社

会意义，情感意义，反映意义，搭配意义，主题意义。不同的国家，由于文化不

同，或者在其他方面不同，同样意思的词在不同国家会用不同形式来表示，相同

定义的词由于其文化背景不同也会用不同的联想意义。由于文化的不同，相同的

颜色代表不同的联想意义。因为颜色的联想意义在不同的文化背景下会有所不

同，,许多人总是对颜色词的内涵意义有些错误的理解。因此有时会闹些笑话。

为了减少这些不必要的误解和歧义，我要分析在不同文化中不同颜色的内涵意义（在这里，

我把重点放在中文和英文上）。我采用对比的方法来分析其不同。运用这种对比的分析方法，

我们可以更清楚地看到它们之间的不同。

2.Keyword: words, culture, color, associative meaning

词，文化，颜色，联想意义

3.

1Introduction
1.1 Language is one of the most important forms to express culture.The famous American linguists Edward Sapir has said: Language cannotbe existed if it separated from cultural and c annot be separatedfrom social practice and all sorts of inherited faith. This kind ofpractice and the general belief determines the nature of our lives.The vocabulary system loaded with cultural information. Vocabulary isinfluenced and restricted by ethnic social situation, religiousbeliefs, customs, concept of value, aesthetic factors and so forth.And we can see national cultural condition through Vocabulary. So"vocabulary is national

culturefossil". Because vocabulary is national culture fossil，thatmeans ethnic

culturecontainsin vocabulary。Colorwords and term are tightly bound into

cultureand emotions and have strong cultural connotations. Since the1970’sthe study of culture meaning, values, connotations of color hasdeveloped into a special area of study amongst multi-disciplinarianscientists from the fields of Anthropology, Linguistics andNeurologist. The “anthropology of color’ is an increasinglycommon subject in scholarly journals (Comparative Readings of Englishand Chinese). In my paper, For this view I will make a carefulelaboration.

1.2Theorganization of this paper
Inmy following elaboration, I intend to talk about seven significantcolors.

1Colorof black
2Colorof red
3Color of white
4Color of yellow
5Color of blue
6Color of green
7Color of pink

4Mainbody

1Black
Bothin Chinese and in English cultures. Black generally means dark,solemnity, and grime. Black has both positive and negativeassociations but they trend toward the negative. In china,
‘hei’always means unlucky, and always let people think of unhappy things.The

derivationof black is related to bad, unlucky, disaster and evil, such as‘heibang’

（黑帮）,‘heishi’（黑市）,‘heiqian’（黑钱），‘heixin’（黑心）,‘heidao’（黑道）

andso on. All these bad words are related to ‘hei’. Black in englishrefers to death, unlucky, omen, disaster. The words include black arealmost bad meaning. Such as black words, black man, black guard,black mark, a black eye, black dog, to wear black for her father, ablack letter day, black deed, black sheep, black look, black mood,black coffee, etc.

Butdifferent from Chinese, black in English also has positive meaning.Black can represent respect, serious as well as profits. For example,black figure in the black, interest in the black. Although, ‘hei ’in Chinese and ‘black’ in English have the similar meaning. Theystill have something that different. So we should pay more attentionon it.

2Red
Redis the ‘universal color’ .It is found in every culture and everylanguage. It is the color of blood. It is the color of fire. It is inseparable form both life and death. In Chinese and in Englishculture, ‘hongse’ and ‘red’ are generally suggestive ofenthusiasm, celebration, happy, remembrance and so on. And in china,it also represents loyal, brave, firm and frank. In China, red isused on happy days and at all of life’s festivals. For example, forSpring Festival people will decorate their entrance door withcouplets on both sides of the walls beside the doorway. Thesecouplets are on red paper and bear auspicious prayers for the comingyears. Some families may hang a big red lanterns, attach red papercuts on there windows and set red firecrackers. In Chinese traditionwedding, almost things that are prepared for wedding are red, redwedding clothes, red bed red candle, red sedan red shoes and so on.Red is used for any celebration, it is symbolic of good fortune.Every Chinese people love red. In English, there are little thingsthat related with red are good, except the red-blood man, the redcarpet, which related with celebration. In western culture, red is aextremely derogatory word. It links with blood, fire and so on. Itsymbolizes cruel and ferocious, blood, dangerous and nervous. Forexample, red hot political campaign, the red rules of tooth and claw,a red revolution and nervous. For example, red revenge, a red battle,red alert, a red flag, a red adventure story. It even more symbolizesdissolute and obscene, such as a red waste of this youth, a red lightdistrict. And in business field, red means loss. For example, in thered, red also express emotion, in this aspect, there are littledifference in Chinese and in English, they also express the feelingsof shy, inspiring, angry. For instance, in Chinese, there are‘nianhong’(脸红),‘mianhongerchi’（面红耳赤）.In English, there are ‘to become red faced’, ’her face turnedred’, ‘see red’. ‘red rag’, ‘red blooded’. Inpolitical, the two different cultures have different senses of red inthis aspect. In Chinese political thought, ‘red’ means ‘red-wing’or conservative. In English ‘red’ means ‘left-wing’ orsocialist. The path of political expression and translation can bestrewn with such pitfalls.

3White
WhileChinese and English users both share associative meanings toward‘WHITE’ and ‘BLACK’ there are some differences. Chinese ‘bai’has some difference associative meanings from English. In Chineselanguage, ‘bai’ always contains the meanings of ‘in vain’,‘despise’, ‘unworthiness’. It refers to these derogatorysenses, such as ‘baioda’(白搭),‘baisong’(白送),‘baiyan’(白眼).But in English countries, which always related to good, lucky things.People in western countries consider that white is elegant and pure.White represents glorious, nice, wish, happy, and so on. For example,white knight, white lie, white man, a white day. The ceremonial useof the color white has different senses in there two differentculture, likewise. In China, white is the traditional color offunerals. In English speaking countries, it is the color of wedding.It is not uncommon for an entire bridal party to be dressed totallyin white! English people use white in their weddings, because whitein china are only used for funerals.

4Yellow
Inancient china, ‘huang se’ (yellow) is the royal’s proprietarycolor. It represents the honor authority. But now, yellow’s meaningchanges. It often contains derogatory sense. When it refers toyellow, people often think of corrupt,

pornographic,obscenities, etc. Such as’huang se dian ying’(黄色电影)，‘huangse

shukan’（黄色书刊），‘huangse yin yue’（黄色音乐）andso on. In English,

yellowalways contains derogatory sense, too. Its pejorative connotationoriginates in the United States. In 18thcentury, American always use yellow paper to print some noveletishesbooks, which is called the yellow publications. Yellow in English notonly means obscene, but also means jealousy, suspicion, timid andannoying. For example, yellow-dog, yellow-livered, yellow looks,yellow steak, yellow journalism. But, yellow in English has someneutral usages. For instance, yellow pages refer to the shops,restaurants and institutions directories. Yellow alert meanspreparing air-raid warning, in football match yellow card meanswarning. Because yellow has so many different meanings, we should useit cautiously.

5Blue
Thereis a big difference in the meaning of blue between China and Englishcountries. In China, blue means open and quiet. In China, blue oftenreminds people of the blue sky, blue sea and make people feelcomfortable and quiet. However, blue in English extremely has theopposite meaning. Blue is often associated with melancholia. Italways refers to the bad mood, somber mood and in many cases is asorrowful pronoun. For example, blue music, in a blue mood, havingthe blue, blue Monday, be blue about the prospect. Otherwise, bluealso has some other meanings. Blue in English often involves to highsocial status and noble identity. Such as, blue book, blue blood.Some use of blue may in fact have no sense of ‘blue’ in theirmodern expression. Such as, blue-prints. Blue sometimes refers tocomparative obscene meaning. Such as, make a blue joke,

bluemovie.

6Green
Bothin china and in English countries, green is used to signify hope,safe, peaceful. People use green light to show security trafficsignals, extended from the green card. Beside, green can beassociated with life, fruits, vegetables, horticultural and so on. Inchina, beside the meanings above, green has the

derogatorysense. For example, ’lǜmao zi’(绿帽子),whichmeans somebody’s

wifehave secret communication with other male. But we can not translate‘绿帽

子‘in‘to wear a green hat’ but in ‘to be a cuckold’. In englishgreen is most

commonlyseen as the color of jealousy in reference to green with envy,green-eyed monster or green-eyed, such as greenback, green power.Green in English also has the moaning of novice, amateur, noexperience, simple. For example, he is still green to his job. Do yousee anything green in my eye? A green horn. And green is the symbolof energy and vigor, such as a green old age, to remain greenforever.

7Pink
InChinese culture, pink also calls a peach blossom color. Pink symbolswomen. In western culture, pink symbolizes essence and acme. Such as,the pink of perfection, the pink of politeness. And it alsosymbolizes the upper-class society. Eg, pink lady, pink tea, apink-collar worker.

5Conclusion

Languageis protean, word also is protean.Because of the word is protean,It is difficult for us to fully grasp the meaning of the word and itsconnotative meaning. And each nation of culture is different, so thesame definition of words will have different implied meaning. This ismore difficult for us to grasp the vocabulary. So, in order to have abetter understand of the meaning behind the vocabulary, we had betterlearn its culture.

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