Colours & Metaphors : A Study of Black, White and Grey Metaphors in English Idioms (original) (raw)
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Colours and metaphors: cognitive perspectives
Radovi Razdio filoloških znanosti, 2018
In this study our primary interest is to explore the cultural-cognitve elements of metaphors dealing with colours. Proverbs, phrases and metaphors are perceived as an adjustment of cognitive and linguistic patterns to the needs of communication. Recent research in psycholinguistics shows that the meaning of many idioms are motivated by people's conceptual knowledge, which includes metaphorical schemes of thought. Like idiomatic phrases, proverbs give significant insights into the poetics of mind because they reflect how our metaphorical conceptualization of experience bears on particular social situations. Metaphoric language has its preference regarding colours. Mainly basic, focal colour terms are used in metaphors; some colours are used more frequently than others. Black, white and red are the most frequent having the largest map of experience. In conclusion, metaphoric language gives us insight into the structure of human mind. 1
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, 2022
Color terms, especially the three primary colors, bear the weight of basic meaning of color in English and Chinese idioms and usual expressions. The same color has different meanings in different languages, thus it makes Native English speakers and Native Chinese speakers who use other foreign languages puzzled. Therefore, it is necessary to make a language and culture comparative study of the meanings of three primary colors in English and Chinese idioms and usual expressions. This essay uses metaphors and cognition to make the comparative study between color idioms and usual expressions in English and Chinese. It aims at revealing the similarities and dissimilarities of metaphorical cognitive meanings of three primary colors in English and Chinese idioms and usual expressions. This essay provides a perspective for the role of cultural variation of metaphor and plays a role in overcoming the language barriers in communication.
2011
Metaphorical language is an indispensable part of human life, involving language, thought and action (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1998). Accordingly, metaphor plays a major role in people's everyday language use and thinking. Our conceptual system is based on experiences we have gained with interacting with people and things surrounding us. In this respect, color plays an important role in convention metaphorical expressions in people's lives and daily communication. As a sub-category of metaphors, color terms are widely used literally and metaphorically in different languages and may also reflect cultural identities of language users.
Studies in Linguistics, Culture, and FLT, 2017
This study aims at investigating how similar and different the embodied cognition of Turkish and English speakers is by providing a systematic description of Turkish and English white colour idiomatic expressions and by analyzing them within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory through which the cognitive motivations behind the idiomatic expressions can be demonstrated. In order to do so, a large-scale corpus study based on specialized dictionaries on idioms in Turkish and English was carried out and a table was presented for each language illustrating the idiomatic expression, its meaning, its translation for the Turkish part, and the underlying conceptual metaphor or metonymy. After this cognitive analysis, it was revealed that despite some similarities in the cognitive mappings of the idioms in Turkish and English, the connotations of white colour idioms in two genetically unrelated languages vary because of cultural, historical, religious, or customary matters.
The paper presents a short a study on etymology of words for basic colors in Vietnamese. It is shown that lexicon of basic colors was derived mainly through metaphor, which results from observation of a phenomenon, an object, an act, or a living creature, and its associated or defining features or characteristics. The process of metaphoring could be undertaken over a period of time in the past by speakers of many different languages or dialects, that eventually evolved and merged into the Vietnamese language, modified through quốc-ngữ codification using Latin alphabet.
Translating Color Metaphors: A Comparative Study
New Insights into Arabic Translation and Interpreting , 2016
Colors in different languages and cultures may convey different connotative interpretations. And even when cultures come to contact and interact, color meaning does not necessarily overlap. Colors in Western and Eastern cultures convey different meanings, depending on the beliefs, norms and constraints which prevail in each culture. The study reveals the importance of the conceptual metaphor COLORS ARE EMOTIONS in communicating about and reasoning with emotion. It explores the conceptual blending that governs color metaphors understanding within a translatability perspective.
Metaphorical Extensions of the Colour Terms White and Black in Serbian and English
Šesti međunarodni interdisciplinarni simpozijum „Susret kultura“ – Zbornik radova, 2013
two most basic colour terms, and , in Serbian and English. These two terms have been most basic ones, since they were found to exist even in languages which have only two names for colours. In our analysis, metaphorical extensions were isolated after comparing several Serbian and English dictionaries, and attempts were made at making hypotheses about how these extensions came into being. The study shows that there is a relatively high degree of correspondence between the two compared languages in terms of the existence of underlying conceptual metaphors with and serving as source domains.
Ins Blaue Hinein: Conceptual metaphors with the colour blue around the world
2019
Colour perception and conceptual metaphor are areas where language and cognition interact. Different languages categorize colours differently (cf. Kay et al. 2009). In order to investigate whether there is a relation between the type of colour terminology and the types of conceptual metaphors found in a given language, a qualitative study was done on a small sample of Standard Average European (SAE) and non-SAE languages. The focus here was on conceptual metaphors involving the colour blue. Languages were coded for their type of colour terminology (zero, one, or two separate basic terms for blue); their conceptual metaphors with blue were then collected and discussed from the framework of embodied cognition, as described by Lakoff and Johnson. This revealed that many negative metaphors shared across SAE and non-SAE languages are anchored in correspondences between blue and bodily states. In addition to this overlap between SAE and non-SAE languages, both groups also contain metaphors not found in the other. Furthermore, ‘grue’ (no basic term for blue) languages show a difference between the ‘grue’ term and an ‘indigo’ term, which appears to be equivalent to the difference between ‘sea blue’ and ‘sky blue’ in languages with two basic terms. The implications of this for translation between languages of different types are briefly discussed. Term paper for Translation Studies Class, taught by Dr. Gijs Mulder. Two references were missing from the list, I have since added these. If you find any more ERRATA, please let me know!
Black and White Metaphors in Multicultural Communication
Black and White Metaphors in Multicultural Communication, 2023
The corpus of the Contrast Study of English, Russian, and Jewish Black and White Metaphors (BWT) consists of over 50 units based on BWT lists from our previous study of trilingual metaphors. The use of each metaphor is supported by a citation found through targeted Internet searches and verified against the Pragglejaz Group's metaphor identification procedure. The methodological basis of the work is the Berlin-Kay theory of basic color terms, the theory of conceptual metaphor, and the main provisions of cultural linguistics. As a result of careful observation of metaphors in three languages, conclusions were drawn about the motivation of food metaphors related to the color of the dish and raw materials, and the complex motivation of clothing metaphors. The paper traces the dynamics of economic metaphors such as a decrease in the use and absorption of broader metaphors, a change in meaning as a result of the competition of metaphors, and the influence of books. Various aspects of the meanings of the trilingual metaphor of black medicine, and their ascent to the meta-meanings of black as the color of evil and lawlessness were analyzed. The paper notes new metaphorical meanings that have arisen under the influence of fiction and scientific literature, films, music, and the Internet, as well as the transliteration of borrowed metaphors in foreign languages. This work can serve as a platform for an in-depth study of the ethnocultural aspects of trilingual color metaphors.