中西方颜色意义的差异

A Contrastive Study between Chinese and English

Color

学院：外国语学院

专业：英语专业

学号：08001111

作者姓名：王海南

指导教师：厉娜

Abstract：

Color in English and Chinese has many kinds of meanings and plays an important role in psychological culture and ethnic custom. From black, white, red, green, yellow, purple, and blue, we can see the different meanings in color between English and Chinese.

Key words:

Color; English; Chinese; Psychological culture; Ethnic custom.

Ⅰ.Introduction:

Nature is colorful. Color has specific meaning in people’s heart, causes specific legend and arouses special reflection. In English and Chinese many colors can reflect different culture and emotion. Especially in Chinese, there are already many color words and the same as English. So there I want to contrast black, white, red, green, yellow, purple, and blue between English and Chinese.

Ⅱ.Literature Review

Color stands for many meanings and different colors have different meanings. Generally speaking, black stands for sadness and stateliness; white stands for pure; red stands for good luck; green stands for optimism; yellow stands for happiness; purple stands for mystery; and blue stands for dejection. People prefer to choose optimistic color to decorate their working and living environment, such as white light blue, green, or yellow.

Ⅲ.Contrastive Study:

A. Black

Black has the same meaning in English and Chinese. For example, black stands for sadness and British and American wear black clothes in funeral ceremony and Chinese are used to wearing black mesh. In English, Black Friday is a sad day because that day is the day that Jesus suffered in the Friday before Easter. Moreover, black always stands for darkness、cattiness and evil. At that time, in Chinese it also has similar expression, such as Underworld（黑社会），Black Circle Boys（黑帮），

Black money（黑钱），Black market（黑市），Black day（凶日），Black future（暗淡的前途），Blackmail（勒索），Black list（黑名单）.

However, black also has different meanings between English and Chinese. In Chinese black stands for honor, manliness, austerity, honesty and mystery and so much like these commendatory terms. In theatrical mask, we always use black to stand for people who is honest and austere. In addition, because black sometimes gives people a kind of feeling that it is insidious, sinister and horrible, it stands for evil and reactionary, for example, if you want to say someone that he is sinister, you can say that he is black hearted（黑心肠）, hidden evil inside a thing is inside story（黑幕）,reactionary members are called black circle boys. While in English black also has its specific meaning. In the Bible, black stands for devil, evil, suffering and misfortune. So black is the basic taboos in western culture because it means death, bad omen and disaster, such as black death（黑死病）,to wear black for her father（为她父亲戴孝）, black words（不吉利的话）, a black letter day（凶日）.Black also means crime, such as black guard（恶棍）, blackmail（敲诈、勒索）. It stands for shame, such as a black mark（污点）, black sheep（败家子）,a black eye（丢脸）. In literature, there is a form called black humor. It is a kind of humor which is too exaggerated. B. White

White has ominous meaning in Chinese, because when family member died, others would wear white clothes, white hat. They express their sadness in this way. In ancient times, people call man who causes disaster Whiter Tiger. People who is an intellectual imbecile are called idiot（白痴）. We call ordinary people whites. White also stands for reactionary, decadent and backward, such as white terror. Of course, there are commend meaning of white in Chinese, such as white snow in spring（阳春白雪）.

In western culture, white symbolizes elegance, pure, nobility, equity, lucky and auspicious, so western people uphold white. According to the Bible, Israel sacrificial offerings of God are white, so white is regarded as color for holiday. In British, white symbolizes pure, happiness, hope, bright, peace, power, beauty and kindness, for example in British wedding ceremony, bride wears white wedding garment and in