Article published in:
Anthropology of Color: Interdisciplinary multilevel modelingEdited by Robert E. MacLaury, Galina V. Paramei and Don Dedrick
[Not in series 137] 2007
► pp. 337–345
The semiosis of Swedish car colour names: Descriptive and amplifying functions
Gunnar Bergh | Department of Humanities, Mid-Sweden University, Sweden
This article deals with the different semiotic functions of complex car color names in Swedish. Based on a body of 150 authentic name types, collected from both newspapers and manufacturers’ catalogues, the study looks into the properties of these names from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective, discussing aspects such as morphological structure, information value, and status thinking as they apply to the data. The results of the analysis demonstrate that such color terminology is used to serve both descriptive and amplifying purposes, indicating that there is a complex interaction between physical and cultural aspects in the domain of car color semiosis. As a corollary of the patterns derived, it is argued that the car industry often seems to prefer connotation to denotation as its main color naming strategy.
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.
Published online: 21 November 2007
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.137.22ber
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.137.22ber
Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Anishchanka, Alena V., Dirk Speelman & Dirk Geeraerts
Griber, Yulia A., Dimitris Mylonas & Galina V. Paramei
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