Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Color is closely related to people’s life. In human language, the color words are frequently used, and endowed with plentiful emotional and cultural connotations. In both Chinese and English, color words are abundant. We should pay attention to not only their own basic meaning but also their deeper symbolic meaning. This paper tries to make a contrastive study of some major color words in English and Chinese and find out the causes for these differences and further explore the cultural elements behind the different connotations between Chinese and English color words.

Key words: color words; cultural connotations; cultural differences

摘要：颜色与人们的生活紧紧联系在一起。在人类语言里颜色词经常用到，并且被赋予不同的情感和文化内涵。中文和英文中都存在丰富的颜色词，我们不仅要注意他们的基本含义还要注意他们深层象征意义。本文试从中英文中几个主要颜色词着手比较，分析差别产生的原因，从而揭示颜色词所体现的文化内涵的差异。

关键词：颜色词；文化内涵；文化差异

1. Introduction
It is the bright and colorful nature that provides the place for life and the foundation for development. Color is a present from nature to human beings and color words are the language used to describe the color of every thing. The red sun, blue sky, green grassland, everything has its color. We can not imagine what the world would be like if there were no color of great variety. From ancient times to the present, with the development of society, there are more and more color words which are used to describe different shades of colors. Color words in each nation’s language differ from others in the world. The famous American linguist Brent Berlin & Paul Kay（1991） pointed out that black and white, red, orange, yellow, green and brown, blue and purple, pink, are the basic color words by researching dozens of color words in different languages. On the classification of the basic color words, there are not so much difference in English and Chinese. However, owing to the different historic and cultural background of the two cultures, the same color words have different symbolic meanings.
In human language, the symbolic significance which color words stand for are rich and varied. Color words not only have the function of aesthetic feeling, but also have the function of information. Although some nations have same feelings to some colors, each nation has their special views to colors. The symbolic significance of various color words in different languages often differ a lot in feature. So we should not only notice their basic meanings, but also understand their symbolic significances.