中国人不是Chinese?——Chinese情感色彩的历时研究

Zhongguoren Are Not Chinese?——The Study of the Affective Meaning of Chinese in Diachronic Approach

词汇的情感色彩指话语主体对待客观对象的态度、感觉、感情倾向等,包括褒义、中性和贬义三类。历时研究是指从历史发展的角度对某一事物所进行的研究。词汇情感色彩的历时特点包括:1)有些词的情感色彩在其产生的时候就打上了历史、文学或神话的烙印,这类词的情感色彩通常不会随着社会的发展变化而发生大的变化;2)有些词的情感色彩有时代的特征,这些词的情感色彩会随着社会的不断变化而发生较大的变化。从构词的角度和发展过程来看,Chinese一词的情感色彩是中性的,因为英语中几乎找不到与Chinese有关的贬义习语或表达方式。如果在具体的语境中,Chinese确实表现出贬义色彩,则跟话语主体,客体的价值观,人生观等有关,尤其是跟客观主体的特征有关。

The affective meaning of words refers to the attitudes,sense,feelings of the discourse subjects to the objective world,including commendatory,derogatory and neutral.The approaches to study vocabulary usually include diachronic and synchronic.The diachronic characters of affective meaning include： 1） some words get their fixed affective meaning at their birth when they first appear in literature or mythologies and the affective meaning would not change with the development of the society;2） the affective meaning of some words shows the characteristics of the times.The structure and the history of ＂Chinese＂ show no derogatory.If ＂Chinese＂ really shows some negative meaning in the real situation,the negative meaning is the result of the discourse objects,subjects or their values,attitude towards life,especially the main characteristics of the discourse subjective.