Abstract: Firstly, the paper finds out the frequency of occurrences of color terms through             the investigation of corpus which includes literature and legal works in both Chinese and English-speaking countries. The frequency of occurrences of five color terms in Chinese literary works is obvious. The top one is black, the second is red, then white and yellow, the last one is blue, while in English literary works, the frequency of occurrences of five color terms ranging from the highest to the lowest are black, white ,blue, yellow and red. In English legal works, the using frequency of white is highest while yellow is the lowest while in Chinese legal works, the using frequency of white is also the highest, yellow and blue are the lowest with the same using frequency. Based on this, the paper applies the method of combining induction and deduction, taking the five basic color words “black, white, red, yellow and blue” as examples, to study the use of color terms from a sociolinguistic perspective，with the aim to find how the use of color terms are affected by social factors like politics, geographical environments, cultural traditions, religion and economics.

Key words: sociolinguistics; basic color words; cognition; social factors; influence

CONTENTS

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-2

2.1 The Definition of Color Words-2

2.2 Introduction of Basic Color Words-2

2.3 Development and Research of Sociolinguistics-3

3. The Research of Frequency of Color Words-4

3.1The Frequency of occurrences of Color Words in Literary Works-4

3.2The frequency of occurrences of color words in legal works-5

4. Factors Influencing the Use of Basic Color Words.-6

4.1 The Influence of Politics-6

4.2 The Influence of Geographical Conditions-7

4.3 The Influence of Cultural Environments-7

4.4 The Influence of Religion-9

4.5 The Influence of Economics-10

5. Conclusion-11

Bibliography-11

Acknowledgements-12