Open AccessEMOTIONAL, MENTAL AND PHYSICAL STATES EXPRESSED THROUGH COLOUR CONCEPTS IN ENGLISH AND SERBIAN: A COGNITIVE LINGUISTIC VIEW
Author(s) -
Sonja Filipović Kovačević
Publication year - 1970
Publication title -
godišnjak filozofskog fakulteta u novom sadu/godišnjak filozofskog fakulteta u novom sadu
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2334-7236
pISSN - 0374-0730
DOI - 10.19090/gff.2019.1.75-92
Subject(s) - metonymy , serbian , conceptual metaphor , psychology , linguistics , cognition , cognitive linguistics , perspective (graphical) , metaphor , cognitive psychology , art , philosophy , neuroscience , visual arts
This paper studies the extended meanings of lexemes with the colour concepts red, pink, blue, green and yellow expressing emotional, mental and physical states in English and Serbian from a cognitive linguistic perspective. The initial hypothesis is that lexemes with these colour concepts express states of the mind and/or the body like being angry, unrealistic or sick, for instance, and that these transferred metaphoric meanings are essentially metonymically grounded. The aims are the following:1. to identify the conceptual metaphors associating concrete colour concepts with the abstract concepts of emotional, mental and physical states, 2. to determine metonymic motivation of colour-related metaphors, 3. to consider the issue of cultural universality and/or diversity. The results of the analysis have shown that the studied colour concepts express meanings associated with different states of the mind and the body, which is presented via conceptual metaphors (e.g. being embarrassed is being red, being unrealistic is seeing pink, etc.). Also, most of these metaphors are based on two metonymies: 1. colour of the skin for the state of the mind/body and 2. an experiential association between a particular colour and people`s psychological reaction. There are more similarities than differences between English and Serbian, which is strong ground for believing that the studied metaphors motivated by metonymies are universal.