ABSTRACT
“Dark sky” is a term we use frequently in our everyday life. However, what do we exactly mean by “dark sky”? When we say “dark skies”, usually we are referring to the starry skies rather than its literal meaning: a sky which is dark. This chapter aims to study the meaning(s) of “dark sky” and its usage in two different cultural contexts: the English-speaking and the Chinese-speaking contexts. With the help of Google Trends, this chapter finds that the usage of the term in the two cultural contexts is very different: whereas the term connotes “star night” in the English-speaking context, the term is not even used in the Chinese-speaking one. This may be due to their specific social backgrounds, but this difference also importantly indicates how darkness is differently valued and positioned in these two contexts.
