A Contrastive Study of English and Chinese Color Term “Red” and 红 (hóng, Red) from the Perspective of Cultural Cognitive Linguistics

Abstract

Color terms are important carriers of language and culture, reflecting human cognition and values. Addressing the gaps in existing research-such as the lack of diachronic perspective, limited corpora, and insufficient exploration of cultural cognition-this study, from the perspective of cultural cognitive linguistics, combines conceptual metaphor theory and basic color term theory to explore the semantic similarities and differences, metaphorical mechanism variations, and cultural cognitive motivations of “red” and “hóng”. The research adopts qualitative corpus analysis, synchronic-diachronic analysis, and comparative research methods, with corpora sourced from COCA, COHA, CCL, etc. Results show they share similar semantics in emotion, warning, danger, and assistance, but differ in economic and political fields and some unique meanings. In terms of metaphorical mechanisms, both start from the objective properties of red, follow the mapping logic of “from concrete to abstract”, and center on attribute-related mapping. Differences arise from different histories, social systems, and folk traditions between two nations, leading to distinct mapping paths in politics and economy as well as some unique areas. The cultural cognitive motivations for similarities lie in shared physiological-psychological perceptions and cross-cultural integration. For differences, they stem from variations in productive civilizations, religious cultures, political-historical cultures, and etiquette-folk cultures. This paper contributes to promoting language teaching and learning, cross-cultural communication as well as translation.