Colors Terms and Culture
Abstract: Language is influenced and shaped by culture and meanwhile it reflects culture. In human language there exist a number of color terms that make the world colorful. The color terms are full of rich emotional elements and cultural connotations in languages. It is noticed that different peoples from different cultures have different n to colors in cross-cultural communication. This paper deals with the colors in English and Chine, which, to some extent, can be helpful for the communicative success.武汉有哪些好玩的地方
Key Words: Color TermsCulture in English and Chine
素炒有机菜花 1. Introduction
Language is the bearer of culture, while culture is the source of language, i.e. culture choos language. Language is influenced and shaped by culture and meanwhile it reflects culture. The understanding of a culture requires the understanding of the corresponding language and vice versa.
Color is perception of people to the objective world. Both in nature and in social life, there always exist many kinds of colors, such as “colorful world” or “colorful life”, which shows human life is cloly connected with colors. In different cultures, there are different perceptions of color terms. The colors people e are predetermined by what their cultures prepares them to e. All languages have words that may be ud to identify particular colors, but there is always a special subt of the words known as basic color terms. According to Kay and McDaniel (1978), the “primary colors”, i.e. “black”, “white”, “red”, “yellow”, “green” and “blue”, are hardly excluded from any rearcher’s work, for the six basic color terms mostly reprent perception of people to the colors in the world and they are endowed more meanings than other colors[1]. 一树高
低血钾有什么症状 2. Basic Color Terms
Color terms are full of emotional elements and cultural connotations in languages. Different cultures endow color terms with different connotations. Color terms are very important to each nation; on the one hand they reflect a nation’s understanding of natural
黑暗语environment (“red” for sun, fire and blood, “green” for living plants, “blue” for sky and as). On the other hand they can meet the cultural needs of different nations so as to show one’s world outlook, philosophy and hierarchy and political stands. For example, in China, people wear red clothes to show happiness and white clothes to show grief, while in Europe people wear white clothes to celebrate wedding and they ldom wear red clothes.
面包虫All languages have words that may be ud to identify particular colors, but there is always a special subt of the words known as basic color terms. A basic color term is defined on the basis of a number of criteria. The criteria are specified by Berlin and Kay (1969) as follows: (a) be usable in a wide range of contexts (thus ruling out “blond”, for example); (b) be broad or general in meaning, in the n that it should not be regarded as a “kind of” any other color (thus ruling out “scarlet” and “azure”, for example); (c) salience, i.e. the word must be one which people think of quickly and readily (Goddard 1998: 113-114). According to criteria given by Berlin and Kay (1969), there is no doubt that English has all eleven basic color terms: “black”, “white”, “red”, “yellow”, “green”, “blu
e”, “brown”, “grey”, “orange”, “purple”, “pink”. According to John I. Saeed (1997: 74), Chine has six basic color terms: “black”, “white”, “red”, “yellow”, “green” and “blue”. A physiologist Ewdald Hering[2] obrved that all color variations can be described in terms of six colors: “black”, “white”, “red”, “yellow”, “green” and “blue”. Suffice it to say that the “primary colors” [1], i.e., the first six of all eleven basic colors, are hardly excluded from any rearcher’s work. So for the sake of convenience, the prent study has only concerned the six basic color terms in Chine and English, i.e., “hei” (black), “bai” (white), “hong” (red), “huang” (yellow), “lu” (green), “lan” (blue). However, this does not imply that other color terms are unworthy of exploration. Similarly, it is by no means claimed that a thorough study has been done regarding the six basic color terms in question. The reason for this is that the data collected is far from comprehensive in terms of quantity, and could sometimes be biad in terms of quality.
3.Color Terms and Culture
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In different cultures, there are different perceptions of color terms. Sapir and Whorf had m
ade cross-cultural comparisons of color terms as evidence. When people perceive color with their eyes, for instance, they are nsing that portion of electromagnetic radiation that is visible light. The spectrum of visible light is a continuum of light waves with frequencies that increa at a continuous rate from one end to the other. In other words, there are no distinct colors like “red” and “green” in nature. Culture, through language, guides people in eing the spectrum in terms of the arbitrary established categories that they call colors. Different cultures may divide up the spectrum in different ways. In other words, the colors they e are predetermined by what their culture prepares them to e [6].
Human beings share similar n perceptions of color despite differences in color terminology from one language to another. The physiology of human eyes is esntially the same. People all over the world can e subtle gradations of color and can comprehend other ways of dividing up the spectrum of visible light. However, as a society’s economy and technology increa in complexity, the number of color terms usually also increas. That is to say, the spectrum of visible light gets subdivided into mo
re categories. As the environment changes, culture and language typically respond by creating new terminology to describe it. It is now clear that the terminology ud by a culture reflects that culture’九个饼呀s interests and concerns, such as in English basic color terms are eleven[3], in Chine basic color terms are six[4], while in Russian basic color terms are twelve[2].
