Black as night or as a chimney sweep? Color words and typical exemplars
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Irene Ronga
Irene Ronga is a post-doc at the University of Turin and University College London. She is mainly interested in interdisciplinary studies, combining together linguistics and neurophysiology, with particular focus on sensory experience. Her publications include “Linguistic synaesthesia, perceptual synaesthesia and the interaction between multiple sensory modalities” 2012, “Colour words in proverbs” 2012, and “Novelty is not enough: laser-evoked potentials are determined by stimulus saliency, not absolute novelty” 2013.
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Carla Bazzanella
Carla Bazzanella taught Philosophy of Language from 1991 to 1998 at the University of Turin, Italy. Since 2001 she has been teaching Linguistics, Pragmatics, and Cognitive Linguistics at the University of Turin. She has published books and papers in both English and Italian, in national and international journals. Current research areas include pragmatics, interactional linguistics, philosophy of ordinary language, cognitive linguistics, and gender studies.Erling Strudsholm is Associate Professor of Italian Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen, where he finished his PhD in 1997 with a thesis onRelative situazionali in italiano moderno (LIT Verlag, Münster, 1999). During these last years his research activities have been in historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatic and textual linguistics.Luisa Salvati is a post-doc at University for Foreigners of Siena with a research about multilingualism for special purposes. She is a PhD in Linguistics at University of Naples “L'Orientale”. Current research areas are: second language acquisition, pragma-phonetics, intercultural communication, multilingualism, and language policies.
Abstract
Color is a key feature, crucial for recognizing and categorizing objects. Even though color appearance tends to be perceived as stable, and universal tendencies have been found, color lexicon is subject to both intercultural and intralinguistic variations. Within a general hypothesis of integrating universalistic assumptions with a relativistic view, color terms and comparative color-based expressions (e.g., white as snow) were studied. Data were collected through questionnaires and corpora; the languages studied included Italian, Danish, and English.
Our data provide a picture of the variegated intertwinement between nature and culture in the investigated languages. From a universalistic perspective, natural objects (e.g., sea, sky), which appear to be more stable across time and space, are more frequently mentioned as typical exemplars than artificial ones. From a relativistic perspective, some typical exemplars, which are not common interlinguistically, are mainly related to the linguistic representation of local history and traditions of the specific nation and culture.
Instead of positing a single (either universalistic or relativistic) explanatory model, different interfaces and several contextual parameters are hypothesized to work jointly with universalistic constraints in lexicalizing the chromatic experience.
About the authors
Irene Ronga is a post-doc at the University of Turin and University College London. She is mainly interested in interdisciplinary studies, combining together linguistics and neurophysiology, with particular focus on sensory experience. Her publications include “Linguistic synaesthesia, perceptual synaesthesia and the interaction between multiple sensory modalities” 2012, “Colour words in proverbs” 2012, and “Novelty is not enough: laser-evoked potentials are determined by stimulus saliency, not absolute novelty” 2013.
Carla Bazzanella taught Philosophy of Language from 1991 to 1998 at the University of Turin, Italy. Since 2001 she has been teaching Linguistics, Pragmatics, and Cognitive Linguistics at the University of Turin. She has published books and papers in both English and Italian, in national and international journals. Current research areas include pragmatics, interactional linguistics, philosophy of ordinary language, cognitive linguistics, and gender studies.
Erling Strudsholm is Associate Professor of Italian Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen, where he finished his PhD in 1997 with a thesis on Relative situazionali in italiano moderno (LIT Verlag, Münster, 1999). During these last years his research activities have been in historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatic and textual linguistics.
Luisa Salvati is a post-doc at University for Foreigners of Siena with a research about multilingualism for special purposes. She is a PhD in Linguistics at University of Naples “L'Orientale”. Current research areas are: second language acquisition, pragma-phonetics, intercultural communication, multilingualism, and language policies.
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Munich/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Black as night or as a chimney sweep? Color words and typical exemplars
- Pragmatic uses of person pro-forms in intercultural financial discourse: A contrastive case study of earnings calls
- Request patterns by EFL Canarian Spanish students: Contrasting data by languages and research methods
- Evaluating while justifying intercultural requests
- Forum
- Interculturalism, multiculturalism, and intercultural studies: Questioning definitions and repositioning strategies
- Preference structure in L2 Arabic requests
- Book Reviews
- Book Review
- Book Review
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Black as night or as a chimney sweep? Color words and typical exemplars
- Pragmatic uses of person pro-forms in intercultural financial discourse: A contrastive case study of earnings calls
- Request patterns by EFL Canarian Spanish students: Contrasting data by languages and research methods
- Evaluating while justifying intercultural requests
- Forum
- Interculturalism, multiculturalism, and intercultural studies: Questioning definitions and repositioning strategies
- Preference structure in L2 Arabic requests
- Book Reviews
- Book Review
- Book Review
