Corpus stylistics and colour symbolism in The Great Gatsby and its Thai translations

The present study adopts a corpus stylistic approach to: (1) examine a relationship between textual patterns of colour words in The Great Gatsby and their symbolic interpretations and (2) investigate the ways those patterns are handled in Thai translations. Distribution and co-occurrence patterns were analysed for colour words that are key in the novel: white, grey, yellow and lavender. The density and frequent patterns of each word are argued to foreground an association between the colour word and particular concepts, pointing to symbolic meaning potentials related to the novel’s themes of socioeconomic inequality and destructive wealth. The textual patterns are compared with what occurs in three Thai translations of the novel. While most of the colour images are directly translated, non-equivalents tend to be applied to figurative uses of the colour terms. This results in some changes in textual patterns of the colour words in the translated texts, which can in turn affect readers’ interpretations of colour symbolism in the novel.

Areal patterns and colexifications of colour terms in the languages of Africa

Of all the semantic domains, colour terms have attracted the largest amount of attention, notably from a typological point of view. However, there is much more to be discovered. A search of the cross-linguistic lexical database of African languages (RefLex) reveals several previously undetected areal colexification patterns and shared lexico-constructional patterns in a genetically balanced sample of 401 languages. In this paper, we illustrate several areal characteristics of colour terms: (i) the spread of an areal feature due to a common extra-linguistic setting (locust bean – Parkia biglobosa – as the lexical source of yellow); (ii) two convergence phenomena, one based on a shared lexico-constructional pattern including a term for water, and one based on shared colexifications (red and ripe vs. green and unripe); and (iii) an areal pattern of lexical diffusion of colour ideophones, a category which has thus far been considered difficult to borrow.

Colour and gender: language nuances

It is a deeply rooted belief that women possess a richer colour vocabulary than men (Rich, 1977). According to Lakoff, certain adjectives denoting colour (e.g. mauve) would never be naturally chosen by men unless they were «imitating a woman sarcastically, or a homosexual, or an interior decorator» (1973, p. 49). Are these affirmations adjusted to our present reality? Nowadays, colour is present in almost every economic sector. Consequently, a proficient use of colour vocabulary is expected from professionals, regardless of their gender. Hence, if the differences in colour vocabulary are learnt and highly dependent on the user’s necessities and expectations, then said differences after globalisation and exposure to the Internet should not be so striking. With this objective in mind, this study analyses colour elicitation performed by university students. Both their descriptive capacity and colour lexicon availability are measured depending on students’ colour terms usage. Furthermore, potential reasons for variation are provided.

Stability and change in the colour lexicon of the Japonic languages

Previous work on colour lexicons focussed on universal patterns in their structure and evolution. We collected new colour naming data in Japanese and three under-described Ryukyuan languages (Amami, Miyako and Yaeyama) to investigate semantic variation and change in the colour lexicon of related languages in a modern context. We found several new colour terms (e.g., midori and guriin for ‘green’) in the lexicon of Ryukyuan speakers, apparently resulting from contact with Standard Japanese and English. A comparison of our data with historical data suggests that modern Ryukyuan colour systems are closer to modern Japanese than they are to their historic pasts. However, we also found that modern-day Ryukyuan languages are more similar to each other than they are to Japanese. These findings show the scope of semantic changes that can occur through outside influence and highlight the need for fresh empirical data in the study of semantics in related languages.

The development of linguistic and cultural meanings of English colour lexis: dynamics and modern state

The article is devoted to the study of the dynamics of development and the current state of linguacultural meanings in colour terms that are used in English-language women’s prose. In the course of the analysis of the theoretical and methodological material, it has been revealed that the colour terms in the literary text contribute to the fact that the descriptions and pictures drawn by its author are perceived as correctly as possible by the reader, and the latter more accurately perceives the sensations and emotions experienced by the characters at different moments of the story. During the analysis of the corpus of selected contexts (more than 700 fragments) with colour terms (500 units) from the works of fiction of modern women’s prose – criminal literature of the British writer Elizabeth Haynes – a number of features have been established. All the analyzed works are rich in the use of various colours, generally the main ones, and their shades, but there are also other colours. Thematic groups of colour terms include descriptions of the appearance of the main and secondary characters, everyday realia of the surrounding world, phenomena and objects of the natural world, and other abstract notions. Frequently occurring primary colour terms that do not have a transfer of meaning have been distinguished, and less frequent secondary colour terms with a transfer of meaning, and the secondary ones usually had a more complex morphological and syntactic structure. The selected colour terms that describe the appearance of the characters and have a transfer of meaning are divided into two groups, one of which includes colour terms with a metaphorical component, and the other contains colour terms that form transferred epithets. Within the framework of the description of natural phenomena and objects, the authors distinguish fully metaphorized colour terms, partially metaphorized colour terms that include a metaphorized component that does not extend its influence to the other structural elements of the colour term, as well as colour terms represented by an explicit comparison. In general, colour terms fill the work with a deep content, an additional meaning that the author lays down when writing a literary work.

English colour terms carry gender and valence biases: A corpus study using word embeddings

In Western societies, the stereotype prevails that pink is for girls and blue is for boys. A third possible gendered colour is red. While liked by women, it represents power, stereotypically a masculine characteristic. Empirical studies confirmed such gendered connotations when testing colour-emotion associations or colour preferences in males and females. Furthermore, empirical studies demonstrated that pink is a positive colour, blue is mainly a positive colour, and red is both a positive and a negative colour. Here, we assessed if the same valence and gender connotations appear in widely available written texts (Wikipedia and newswire articles). Using a word embedding method (GloVe), we extracted gender and valence biases for blue, pink, and red, as well as for the remaining basic colour terms from a large English-language corpus containing six billion words. We found and confirmed that pink was biased towards femininity and positivity, and blue was biased towards positivity. We found no strong gender bias for blue, and no strong gender or valence biases for red. For the remaining colour terms, we only found that green, white, and brown were positively biased. Our finding on pink shows that writers of widely available English texts use this colour term to convey femininity. This gendered communication reinforces the notion that results from research studies find their analogue in real word phenomena. Other findings were either consistent or inconsistent with results from research studies. We argue that widely available written texts have biases on their own, because they have been filtered according to context, time, and what is appropriate to be reported.

The distribution of controlled exhaustivity

While predicates in taxonomies (e.g. colour terms) are interpreted as mutually incompatible, this paper shows that their incompatibility is in many cases not lexical. Rather, it is the result of a previously undescribed exhaustivity effect. What is more, this class of exhaustivity effects displays novel behaviour. Exhaustivity is both obligatory and tightly constrained: at first approximation, any taxonomic predicate must be in the immediate scope of the exhaustivity operator it requires. Taxonomic predicates, in this sense, are argued to "control" exhaustivity.

COLOUR TERMS AND THE CREATION OF STATIUS’ EKPHRASTIC STYLE

This paper focusses on colour terminology as a tool for achieving ἐνάργεια (pictorial vividness) in the Latin poetry of the first century c.e. After briefly outlining the developments in the concept of ἐνάργεια from Aristotle to Quintilian, the paper considers the use of Latin terms for black in three descriptive passages from Statius’ epic poem, the Thebaid. It is observed that the poet privileges the juxtaposition of the two adjectives ater and niger in a pattern of uariatio, where ater often carries a figurative meaning and repeats established poetic clichés, while niger is part of unparalleled collocations that evoke a material notion of blackness. Further analysis of the uariatio in the context of each passage reveals that the juxtaposition of the two-colour terms enhances the vividness of the objects described not only by increasing their chromatic impact but also by establishing connections with other parts of the poem, and by inviting a reflection on the competing practices of imitation and transgression of poetic models. The analysis of one stylistic feature (the use of colour terms in uariatio) shows that this stylistic feature is used by Statius for achieving ἐνάργεια as an artistic effect, for reflecting on ἐνάργεια as an instrument through which poetic models are challenged, and for tying his own poetic practice to contemporary rhetorical discussions.

Colour-emotion associations in individuals with red-green colour blindness

Colours and emotions are associated in languages and traditions. Some of us may convey sadness by saying feeling blue or by wearing black clothes at funerals. The first example is a conceptual experience of colour and the second example is an immediate perceptual experience of colour. To investigate whether one or the other type of experience more strongly drives colour-emotion associations, we tested 64 congenitally red-green colour-blind men and 66 non-colour-blind men. All participants associated 12 colours, presented as terms or patches, with 20 emotion concepts, and rated intensities of the associated emotions. We found that colour-blind and non-colour-blind men associated similar emotions with colours, irrespective of whether colours were conveyed via terms (r = .82) or patches (r = .80). The colour-emotion associations and the emotion intensities were not modulated by participants’ severity of colour blindness. Hinting at some additional, although minor, role of actual colour perception, the consistencies in associations for colour terms and patches were higher in non-colour-blind than colour-blind men. Together, these results suggest that colour-emotion associations in adults do not require immediate perceptual colour experiences, as conceptual experiences are sufficient.