In the past, the scholars have investigated and studied the color connotation in different aspects。 The majority of these scholars pay their attention to the symbolic meaning of color。 In the background of Chinese and Western culture, from the Chinese and western traditions to habits and different people’s life experience, all of these are associated with the color connotation。 This paper explores the ways of dealing with the cultural differences in the intercultural communication so as to avoid the obstacles created as far as possible and reach achieve the communicative effect。 Therefore, This 

paper will surely contribute to the study of cultural difference on color word “white”。 And it also helps to fill in the gap of cross-cultural communication when it comes of white terms。 

II。 Previous Study on Color Terms

Color is the optical phenomena (such as red, orange, pink, green, blue, purple, and yellow, etc。), or the visual and perceptual phenomenon to distinguish the objective things for creatures and people on its size or shape。

2。1 Research on Color Terms Abroad and China

In Western country, studies about color terms have a very long history。 Nearly 2,500 years ago, color was studied systematically as a basic cognitive domain for the first time。 Aristotle thinks that simple colors are related to some basic elements in the physical world and it is assumed that as to the nature colors were mixtures of “black” and “white”。 

The doctrine of the (Hypothesis, S。) emphasizes the relativity of semantic structures instead of the role of linguistic universals。 Nevertheless, studies of color terms (Berlin, B。 & Kay, B。) hold that “all languages share a universal system of basic color categorization” and that “these universals are inherent in the human perception of color” (Kay, B。 & McDanie, C。)。 (Berlin, B。 & Kay, B。) investigated 98 languages, and contended that “the referents for the basic color terms of all languages appear to be drawn from a set of eleven universal perceptual categories, and these categories become encoded in the history of a given language in a partially fixed order”

The study and research about color terms can be found in many classical works like Chinese classic poetry Shi Jing。 But they are limited to Chinese color terms。  About the systematic study of color terms has aroused the interest of Chinese scholar due to the introduction of basic color terms by (Berlin, B。 & Kay, B。)。 Now, they have made some achievements。

From the late 1980s to 1990s, the study about color terms reached it’s peak。 Many comparative research have began to find the difference in culture and language intent to promote to the positive communication of cross-culture。 (Nan Baohui) contributes a lot of energy to this field through a scientific and systematic investigation。       

2。2 Chinese Basic Color Terms 

Traditionally, Chinese consider only five basic colors: 白“white”, 黑 “black”, 赤“red”, 青“dark blue”, and黄“yellow” 。This study discusses the two most commonly used colors in modern Chinese, 白“white”and 紫“purple”, and focuses on the process and development of their modern meanings。

For each color term, three types of meanings are identified: original meaning, extended meaning, and abstract meaning。 Original meaning refers to the etymological meaning of the color term; extended meaning refers to the meaning extended from the original meaning through metaphor, metonymy, or other cognitive means; abstract meaning refers to the meaning that has been further abstracted from the extended meaning。 It should be noted that the time periods during which the various meanings of the seven colors were developed differ to a certain extent。 However, since the original meaning is always the earliest meaning, the extended meaning is developed later, and the abstract meaning is the most recent extension of any given color term, this study omits the time periods unless relevant to the discussion。 文献综述