Comparison of Inner Meanings of Color Terms Between Chinese and English from the Perspective of Sociolinguistics

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.201215.307How to use a DOI?

Keywords

colour terms, semantic contrast, cultural perspective

Abstract

There are a large number of color terms between Chinese and English. Due to the great differences of cultures among the history, politics, economy, religion, customs and the ways of thinking, the meanings and usages of color terms are also different between them. In view of this, the article first takes the basic color terms, red, white, black, green, yellow and blue as examples, and uses the method of comparative analysis to elaborate on their connotation, extension and stylistic color. Then, it discusses and analyses them from the two aspects of social attribute and thinking mode. And finally it comes to the conclusion that the semantic difference of color terms between Chinese and English reflects the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western cultures. In terms of social attributes, they are closely related to politics, economy, social hierarchy, occupation, religion and social customs. On the aspects of thinking mode, traditional Chinese culture emphasizes intuitive thinking, while western culture emphasizes logical thinking.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Fu Zhang
AU  - Dawa Pengcuo
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/12/18
TI  - Comparison of Inner Meanings of Color Terms Between Chinese and English from the Perspective of Sociolinguistics
BT  - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Education, Language, Art and Inter-cultural Communication (ICELAIC 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 73
EP  - 79
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201215.307
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.201215.307
ID  - Zhang2020
ER  -