Cultural unit blue in the Old Testament (original) (raw)

Language and Semiotic Studies

The paper describes and analyzes the full presence of blue in the Old Testament – in Hebrew and translations. The interdisciplinary approach includes the treatment of color as a cultural unit according to of Eco’s idea, lexical and contextual semantics, distinguishing visual and verbal color languages. The interface between verbal and visual color language is the prototype. Prototypes are universal natural visual objects – sky, sea, fire, blood, the sun at noon, all plants, light, milk, snow, darkness, and coal and have evolved into cultural units (Eco 1996 [1985]) in all cultures and languages. Basic Color Terms (BCT – blue), Prototype Terms (PT – sky and sea), Rivals Terms of prototypes (RT – sapphire, blue skins), Terms for Basic Features of the Prototypes (TBFP – breadth, infinite, boundless) are examined. Translation is a criterion for semiotic value, cultural and linguistic context. Norm of Test of Free Word-Associations is a source of non-color (secondary) meanings of verbal ...