英语毕业论文红与白中西方的颜色词内涵对比

红与白-中西方的颜色词内涵对比
【Abstract】 All people live in the same material
world, and the physical mechanism of perception is pretty
much the same in all people. However, different peoples
from different countries and with different cultural
backgrounds have the different feelings to the same color
term. Because of their different geographical position,
history, religion, custom, psychology and ways of
thinking, the implied meanings of the color words are
different. There are bunches of color terms in the
vocabularies of different countries. They all have deep
cultural connotations, besides their literal denotations.
In some important occasions, as the main expression of
customs, red and white imply different cultural
backgrounds. Through the analysis of symbolic meanings of
red and white, this thesis puts an emphasis on the
national traits of color terms. Approached from four
aspects-- environment, perception, philosophy and
religion, the study explores the cultural and historical
roots of the differences. The purpose of this thesis is
to avoid errors in cross-cultural communications based on
a better awareness of cultural differences.【Key Words】
red； white； connotation； causes； color terms；
English and Chinese

【摘 要】 人们生活在同一个物质世 界，其感知的生理机制
使人们对颜色词的理解也不禁相同。但是，不同国家不同文化背
景的人对 同种颜色的理解也有所不同。这是因为不同的地理环境，
历史背景，宗教信仰，文化风俗，心理以及思维 方式使颜色词所
蕴涵的意义产生差异。在各种语言词汇里有大量的颜色词，除了
表达颜色本意之 外，它们有更深刻的文化内涵。在中西方的重大
场合里，红白两色作为一种重要的风俗表现形式，深刻体 现了两
种不同的文化背景，本文通过对红白两色基本象征意义的对比分
析，强调了英汉颜色词的 民族特性，并从环境、感知、哲学和宗
教四个方面探索了造成这种差异的文化历史根源。本文研究是为< br>了更好地了解民族文化差异，避免在跨文化交际中产生失误。
【关键词】 红;白;内涵;原因;颜色词;英汉
1. IntroductionTo satisfy our daily necessities,
people use a host of color terms to represent colors. For
example, it is estimated that there are over three
thousand color words in English. Our eyes are able to
distinguish seven million different colors, most of which
we cannot name. As we know, color is the physical
appearance. Although people are in different countries,
they also have the same reflections of colors.
“According to the famous BK Hypothesis——Berlin and Kay
consider that all languages include two to eleven basic
colors, which are black, white, red, yellow, green, blue,
brown, purple, pink, orange, gray.” [1] However, in
addition to what we mentioned above, colors also reflect
the features of different culture and society to certain
extent. In our daily life, people often realize the
colors by optic nerves, and also express their feelings

by colors. “Since human beings have the same physical
mechanism and optic nervous system, it is no differences
in the feelings of colors in theory”[2] : sensory organs
such as eyes, ears and nose to sense the environment, and
the sensations received by them are routed through our
nervous system to our brains, where they are interpreted
and recorded. Therefore, the reflections in our minds of
the objective world are the same, that is, they refer to
things and interpret unit of meanings by means of the
same concepts. However, due to the differences of custom,
geographical position, history, religion, psychology,
some colors have already been the obstructions in the
cross-cultural communication. So learning the
similarities and differences of color terms in English
and Chinese has a great effect on the cross-cultural
communication and instance, in the
traditional Chinese weddings, the bride, who wore red
shoes, red dress, and a red veil, sat in red-painted
palanquin, greeted by the bridegroom who rode a horse
with a big red silk-made flower on the chest. After the
ceremony, they would enter into the bridal chamber
decorated with red things——red candles, red bed, red
quilts, red bedsores, and red pillows. What's more, the
gifts sent by the guests were enveloped in red paper
packages. These red things not only show the joyful
atmosphere, but also suggest that the newly married
couple will have a happy life in the future. However, in
the western countries, the wedding is called
wedding

white gloves and shoes; the carriage of wedding is driven
by white horses, the driver of which wears a white hat;
what's more, the invitation cards are written with silver
letters. It is so different with Chinese custom. In China,
white is used to mean
are hardly use white in celebrations and happy
is natural that English terms of colors may
have cultural associations that are not transparent to
Chinese learners of English as a foreign language. The
following paragraph are meant to focus on the two color
terms——red and white, and to help them attain a better
understanding.