词汇学正式论文

Multiple meanings of the color word “blue”

Abstract

We are living in a world of a profusion of colors. We are probably attracted by multicoloured things. When you see somebody at the first sight, what impress you most maybe the color of him or her . As colors play a indispensible role in our daily life, color terms are also very important in the vocalbulary of every language. As time went on, people started to use color words to express their thoughts and feelings in the communication. With the development of the human society and culture, the meanings of the color words also enrich. On a basis of many researches and theory of the contrastive linguistics, this thesis analyzes the translation and the symbolic meanings of the color word “blue”. As the cultural backgrounds differ in different countries, we should pay more attention to the appropriate translation of the color words. Concerning the multiple cultural connot ations of the color word “blue”, the emphasis is on the translation of “blue”in different contexts in different countries. This paper is to help the readers with the different emotional colouring of “blue”, which appreciative, neutral and negative meanings are all included.

Key words: blue; meaning; translation; cultural connotation; appreciative；neutral；negative

摘要

我们生活在一个色彩缤纷的世界。我们可能被五彩缤纷的事物所吸引。当你看到某人的第一眼,也许留给你印象最深刻的就是他或她身上的颜色。因为颜色在我们日常生活中是非常重要的,因此颜色词也成为了每一种语言都很重要的词汇。随着时间的推移,人们开始用颜色词来表达自己的思想和感情的交流。随着人类社会的发展和文化,颜色词的含义也日渐丰富。基于国内外许多学者对颜色词作出的深入研究和对比语言学的理论,本文分析了颜色词“blue”的翻译和象征意义。由于不同国家的文化背景不同,我们应该更加注意相应的颜色词的翻译。本文提到颜色词“blue”多样化的文化内涵,重点是把握“blue”在不同的国家的翻译。本文旨在帮助读者掌握“blue”的感情色彩，包括了它的积极、中性和消极意义。

关键词：蓝色；意义；翻译；文化内涵；积极；中性；消极

Chapter 1 Introduction

As a word is purely arbitrary and conventional symbol without meaning any

connection with what it refers to, it may sometimes happen that more than one meaning is attached to a word, which is known as polysemy (Zhang Yunfei, 2004, 109) According to the research, we can find that the color word “blue” is a polymous word. It has many different senses.

(1) The Sky, Calmness and Friendliness:

(2) Purity: (3) Nobility: (4) Authority and Power: (5) First-class: (6) Literary: (7) Charity: (8) Plan and Model: (9) Party: (10) Male: (11) The Degree “Very”: (12) Politically Conservative and Faithfulness: (13) Dismal:

(14) Lower Social Status: (15) Obscenity (esp. in a film, joke or story) (16) Murder: (17) Complexion From Tiredness, Coldness, Sickness or Fear: (18) Uselessness and Illegalness: (19) Impossibility:

(20) Danger and Prohibition: 21) Bruises:

(22) Other Connotations: “Blue-sky market” is an open-air market; in America, the restaurant meal wit h the fixed price is called “blue-plate”; and “blue rinsed” refers to elderly, neatly dressed and conservative women who formed a group “blue-rinse brigade”; “blue tape” is a kind of wine “gin”; “to win one’s blue” implies to be elected as a delegate; “to blush like a blue dog” means to be a thick-skinned person and feel shameless. In America, “blue grass” first indicates a kind of music “June grass” in Kentucky and later is used to refer to the people and the state of Kentucky; and “Blue Hen State” is nickname of Delaware where the citizens are “Blue Hen’s Chickens”. (ZhangYun,2006, 69-73)

From the list above, we can know that blue can not indicate only the appreciative meanings, like purity, nobility, power, first-class, literary, charity, faithfulness and plan but also the negative meanings like dismal, low status, obscenity, uselessness, impossibility, danger. In terms of the field, on the one hand, blue can indicate different meanings in the political, economic and cultural fields. In the political field, blue represents the Democratic Party in America or British and Canadian conservative party. In the economy field, blue can indicate profitable, like blue chip. In the cultural field, blue is probably linked with the ocean, so it has some favorable associative meanings, like blue print and blue blanket. On the other side, blue can indicate different meanings in the religion and emotion fields. In the religion field, blue represents sacredness, truth, and loyalty, like blue heaven. In the emotion field, blue can indicate not only sadness but also a sense of nobality and power, like blue blood and blue-eyed.

Besides, color terms can be used to describe the abstract concepts, to make those daily expressions in various contexts more vivid and interesting. For instance, “blue print”denotes to a plan while “blue movie”implies that the movie is related with sex.(Jin Feng, 2010,18)

Concerning the multiple cultural connotations, this paper devides all of the meanings of “blue” including its phrases into three catogories: appreciative meaning, neutral meaning and negative meaning.