最新中英文化下颜色词的不同涵义文献综述.docx

1、最新中英文化下颜色词的不同涵义文献综述中英文化下颜色词的不同涵义-文献综述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

2、color categories. Basic color terms, 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 sch

3、olars from home and abroad.Research on 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 ph

4、ilosophy gave rise to the aesthetic study 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 universali

5、ty of language principles highly valued 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

6、 better understanding of the internal 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

7、terms” does not have a unique operational 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

8、 a foundation for studying color terms 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

9、inventory of just 11 color categories. 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

10、 words, we need to find out basic color 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 ar

11、e related to the sensory attitudes of 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 ps

12、ychological states of feeling can be 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 a

13、nd blue-red.It is showing that knowing 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

14、from informants representing different 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 t

15、erms, which are believed to represent 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 vocabula

16、ry, and industrialized people do not 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 i

17、n 1973, claims that women are more likely 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

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

19、ngsandcharacter,color,makeexpressionaddedimageofthefigurativemeaning.Thecolorofsimpletoadmiretheordersofthecharactersofsublimationtoconductimageexpressionisthelanguageoftheuniquefunctionofcolorwords.Especiallyincross-culturalcommunicationbecauseofdifferentnationalities,lifecharacteristics,psychologi

20、calactivities,emotion,indifferentdegree,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

21、 Chinese CultureOnomatopoeia Words & 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

22、development of dying and pottery industries. 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

23、 analyzed the production and development 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, a

24、nd makes me clearly to compare with these 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 sch

25、olars. Later, many scholars conducted 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. t

26、he relationship of color terms and culture 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

27、features and the like of a certain society 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

28、writing. With large materiel, the paper 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 c

29、olor words at home and abroad are conducted 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 com

30、parative study on translation and cultural 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 b

31、asic elements in the physical world and 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

32、 meaning”. The definition shows that 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 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