색채어 관련 중국어 관용어 분석

Abstract

This paper examines the cultural meaning of terms for color in Chinese idioms, their rhetorical features, and the frequency of their use in modern language. Several patterns emerged. First, certain Korean words for colors are written with the same or similar Chinese characters as the corresponding words in modern Chinese. However, due to diachronic changes in meaning, some color terms actually refer to different colors in Korean and Chinese. Even though they refer to the same color in some cases, the frequency of use and socio-cultural status of these terms are different in the two countries. Second, the frequency with which these terms appear in corpus data and dictionaries illustrates the popularity of these idioms in modern Chinese. Some of the most frequent idioms (according to corpus data analysis) are 开门红, 脸红脖子粗, 开绿灯, 背黑锅, etc. White occurred most frequently in Chinese idioms, followed by black, red, and yellow. Third, contrast and rhyme are two rhetorical features of Chinese idioms involving color terms. Colors that are contrasted include black and white, red and blue, and red and white; the dual opposite pair red and white is the only pair that has a symbolic meaning in Chinese culture. Fourth, Chinese idioms involving color terms generally have a positive or negative connotation. Differences can be observed between words and sentences, which are grammatical units with clear meanings. For instance, color idioms with a positive or negative connotation have their own meaning (referring to a color) regardless of grammatical structure, while in color idioms with a neutral connotation, the phenomenon or behavior described by the entire sentence has a positive or negative connotation.