Exploring the Cultural Connotations of “Purple” and “Zi”

Abstract

Colors constitute our life, thus making colors bearing varied and diverse cultural connotations as the carrier of culture. Color terms in both English and Chinese are endowed with specific meanings and implications. A multitude of basic color words in English and Chinese, such as “red, white, yellow” and “Hong, Bai, Huang” in Chinese accordingly, are explored in depth. By enquiring into British National Corpus and Chinese National Corpus, the paper is devoted to originally looking into the cultural connotations following the commonness and contrast between “purple” and “Zi” against different cultural backgrounds, and further brings insight into the reasons behind the phenomena. Therefore, a better cultural understanding of the color terms “purple” and “Zi” is available and further implications on cross-cultural communication can be reached.