FREE ASSOCIATIONS TO THE COLOUR TERMS: GENDER-RELATED DIFFERENCES

Word association is one of the major subjects studied in linguistics, psychology and psycholinguistics. According to Sinopalnikova (2003), the simplest experiment technique to reveal the association mechanisms is a free association test. It gives the broadest information on the way knowledge is structured in the human mind. The present study is an attempt to investigate whether the speaker’s gender contributes to the quantity of associated concepts. In a word association test, a list of words is presented to subjects that are asked to response with the first word/s coming into their mind. 1037 valid concepts as a response to 11 color terms have been assembled and evaluated in terms of the number of nouns, adjectives, verbs, proper nouns, abstract concepts, syntagmatic and paradigmatic responses. The study illustrates that the gender of the speaker has effect on the number of free association to the stimulus words. (1) The female participant tend to use adjectives and verbs while almost all of the words associated by males are nouns. (2) The number of the abstract concepts shows difference according to the gender. (3) Men tend to use more proper nouns than women do. (4) Women tend to give much more paradigmatic responses than men.