The most profound hues have their own word interpretations. If a certain colour is not significant to this culture, the language lacks a phrase for it.
The two most efficient methods for learning what each colour means are both listed here. The first one has to do with the application of linguistic techniques. Here, we can discuss the comparative analysis of phraseological units that include a component named colours as well as the comparison of studies of fiction literature and various literary and scholarly sources regarding colour. The second involves conducting an association experiment with individuals from each culture. The associative field of a term is a real concept that is directly related to the historical and cultural traditions of this particular nation, according to Vasilevich A.P. The respondents' responses to an association experiment are uniform, typical, and represent widespread cultural realities.
The first method thus enables the construction of the semantic field of the colour and the discovery of all the meanings of the hue unique to this culture. The second method enables final reconstruction while also allowing for the specification of these meanings and the organisation of the semantic field of colour. With the use of email and several social network sources, the associative experiment was conducted between 2004 and 2009 in Russia, Europe, the United States, and a few other nations. Test subjects were asked to list the verbal connections they had with the specific colours red, blue, and green.
We subjected the findings to the content-analysis and semantic grouping process. The study's findings led to various conclusions, including:
- The connections of the colours blue and green with untamed and inanimate natural events and objects were strong;
- In all civilizations, the colour red is linked to a variety of emotions. The colour red is often associated with concepts like love, passion, fury, and so forth, which helps to explain this.
It's noteworthy to note that the English language contains a high percentage of emotional connotations with the hue blue. This can be explained by the fact that in English culture, the meaning of the hue blue includes the concepts of melancholy and mourning. Thus, blue has primarily negative connotations in English society.
Colour | Total | Associations with the objects and phenomena of wild life and inanimate nature | Associations with the cultural objects | Associations with abstract terms | Associations with the emotional terms |
Russian culture, N = 145, total 2849 | |||||
red | 496 | 209 (42.1) | 177 (35.7) | 43 (8.7) | 64 (12.9) |
green | 459 | 279 (60.8) | 88 (19.2) | 69 (15.0) | 20 (4.4) |
blue | 481 | 276 (57.4) | 111 (23.1) | 85 (17.7) | 8 (1.7) |
English culture, N = 110, total 2218 | |||||
red | 387 | 176 (45.5) | 112 (28.9) | 45 (11.6) | 52 (13.4) |
green | 366 | 233 (63.7) | 59 (16.1) | 48 (13.1) | 25 (6.8) |
blue | 366 | 240 (65.6) | 65 (17.8) | 41 (11.2) | 19 (5.2) |
Mixed European culture (answers in English), N = 65, total 1303 | |||||
red | 226 | 93 (41.6) | 33 (14.6) | 40 (17.7) | 58 (25.7) |
green | 214 | 122 (57.0) | 30 (14.0) | 39 (18.2) | 19 (8.9) |
blue | 213 | 127 (59.6) | 28 (13.2) | 52 (24.4) | 5 (2.4) |
As these are the names of the objects and phenomena of the wild life and inanimate nature that surrounded a man from the very beginning of his cultural and historical development, the majority of the answers in the regarded groups took the meanings of the so-called "prototypical referents" of the colour. They thereby form the nucleus of the color's semantic field. Some meanings with a small percentage but pointing to the prototypical referents of colour can also be incorporated into the nucleus of the semantic field of colour, which refers to natural objects and phenomena that are closely related to the consciousness of a person speaking a particular language and that are determined by the climate, the environment, and the location of the country. Therefore, colour functions as a component of the way the world looks and is present in every feature. It is a crucial component of the subject image content and is included in the written text. Depending on his unique connotation, every person can relate several emotions to a same colour.
Every hue has a culturally set meaning that is based on the material it is made of (for instance, the colour red makes your heart beat faster and your blood start to rush, denoting danger from an impending attack, according to M. Lusher). The most profound hues have their own word interpretations. If a certain colour is not significant to this culture, the language lacks a phrase for it. The current psychological interpretation of colour follows their traditional cultural concept of colour. It is adapted from Dr. Lousier's psychological colour test, which uses the colours red, green, yellow, blue, and violet, and is based on the claim that the meaning of the colours is constant and the same for everyone regardless of race, gender, or social standing because each colour represents the state of the endocrine glands in the brain. However, the effect of a colour on a person is purely subjective and varies for different people: One person may like a certain colour, while another may not.