Abstract

In Chinese and English, many words constituted by the color are widely used in the language. Because color is a perception of the objective world, so these color words have a rich metaphorical meaning. But compared with time metaphor, space metaphor and emotion metaphor, the concern of color metaphor is not very high. Black and white is the basic color of each national language, so this article is based on the theory of conceptual metaphor, takes color words “black” and “white” in English and Chinese as an example, and makes a comparative analysis of the phrases related to “black” and “white” color in Chinese and English, and classifies the metaphorical meanings of black and white color and sums up the conceptual metaphor which these meanings belong to. At the same time, this article also analyzes the causes of commonness and personality. Through the analysis of metaphor theory, making people more understand the causes of differences between Chinese and Western culture, so as to help people from different cultural backgrounds to better communicate with each other.

Key words: conceptual metaphor; color word; black; white

Contents

Abstract

中文摘要

1 Introduction1

2 Literature review2

2.1 Metaphor theory2

2.2 Color words3

3 Theoretical Framework: Conceptual Metaphor Theory4

3.1 Definition of Conceptual Metaphor.4

3.2 Function of Conceptual Metaphor.5

 3.2.1Way of looking at the world.5

 3.2.2Creation of new meaning.5

 3.3 Classification of Conceptual Metaphor6

  3.3.1Structural metaphor.7

  3.3.2Orientational metaphor7

  3.3.3Ontological metaphor8

4 A Comparative Study of Color words Black and White in Chinese and English.8

4.1Black Metaphors.9

  4.1.1Black Metaphors in Chinese.9

  4.1.2Black Metaphors in English.10

4.2 White Metaphors.11

  4.2.1White Metaphors in Chinese11

  4.2.2White Metaphors in English11

4.3 Factors of the similarities and differences.12

 4.3.1Factors of the similarities12

 4.3.2Factors of the differences13

5 Conclusion.14

References 16