A Study on New Color Words from the Perspectives of Cognitive Metaphor and Metonymy Abstract Color is a natural phenomenon that is closely linked with human life. Since early times, studies on color words have been done at home and abroad. As time goes by, color words have been broadened to a large category with more and more new characteristics. Recently, the so-called New Color Words (NCWs), such as “naughty orange”, “passion blue”, “优雅紫(elegant purple)” and “胜利红(successful red)”, enjoy great popularity, especially in commercial industries like electronics, cosmetics, clothes and so on. Compared with traditional color words (TCWs), NCWs have more emotional characteristics as well as many rich and abstract meanings. 47123
This study analyzes the most representative new color words from the Internet, TV and other resource as our linguistic data. In Chinese NCWs, it mainly studies NCWs that have three Chinese characters. There is no doubt that NCWs become a popular topic for lots of researches from different perspectives. With the rapid development of cognitive linguistics, it is of great significance to do studies based on cognitive theories. Thus, this essay aims to study on NCWs from the perspectives of cognitive metaphor and metonymy. It also presents a semantic analysis of NCWs both in Chinese and English to explain its structure and characteristics, origin, background as well as the classification and functions. Besides, the survey on the use of NCWs states the frequency and popularity as well as the necessity and limitation.
On the basis of the analysis, this thesis provides five types of NCWs: Noun+Basic color words, adjective+basic color words, verb+basic color words, loanword+basic color terms and “zero color” color words. Compared with traditional color words (TCWs), NCWs have three obvious characteristics: randomness in word collocation, subjectivity in word’s meaning and originality in word’s expression. According to the semantic aspect, NCWs can be classified into two types: new realistic-type and freehand-type color words. The function of NCWs is embodied in commercial, literatural, artistic and emotional aspects. From the analysis of NCWs from the perspectives of cognitive metaphor and metonymy, it is found that generally metaphor exists in new freehand-type color words while metonymy new realistic-type color words. And in some NCWs, both metaphor and metonymy exist.
Through the survey on the use of NCWs, the thesis points out the universality of NCWs in commercial areas. The use of NCWs benefits people a lot. However, NCWs tend to be arbitrary and fuzzy, which cause troubles and misunderstandings in daily life. Thus, it is significant to take action to standardize the naming of NCWs. Those of great arbitrariness and fuzziness should be gradually eliminated. Only in this way, the development of NCWs can have a bright future.
Key words: TCWs; NCWs; metaphor; metonymy; semantic; necessity; limitation
从认知隐喻和转喻的角度研究新兴颜色词
摘要颜色,一种无处不在的自然现象,和人类的生活紧密相连。纵观国内外,对颜色的研究历史可谓是源远流长。随着时间的推进,科技迅猛发展,社会不断进步,人类思想更新,颜色词也在发生着变化,越来越多的新鲜血液注入其中,焕发出全新的面貌。近年来,一类新兴颜色词成为热门,例如“naughty orange”、“passion blue”、“优雅紫”、“胜利红”等。新兴颜色词受到大众追捧,成为商业领域的宠儿,广泛用于数码产品、化妆品、服装等产业。相较于传统颜色词,新兴颜色词褪去单调,在传递颜色之余,被赋予人类情感色彩,使其表达出的意思更加丰富抽象,让人浮想联翩。
本研究从网络、电视、相关论文等渠道中收集大量中英新兴颜色词,并通过分析、对比等方法选取其中最具代表性的词语作为语料。汉语新兴颜色词有双音节、三音节、四音节及以上音节,类别较多,所以本文选取了使用频率较高的三音节词作为研究对象。一直以来,众多学者从不同角度开展对新兴颜色词的研究,成果颇多。而当今,认知语言学的飞速发展给学者提供了一个全新的角度来进一步研究新兴颜色词。因此,本文旨在从认知隐喻和转喻的角度来研究新兴颜色词。为了进一步说明新兴颜色词,本文还对其进行语义学研究,从而展现其结构和特点、起源和背景、以及分类和功能。另外,根据新兴颜色词在生活中运用的情况,使用过程中体现的必要性以及存在的问题也一并给予说明。最后,本文将对研究做出总结并列举所得启示。