Publications

Publication details [#11103]

Verspoor, Marjolijn H. and Agnes de Bie-Kerekjarto. 2006. Colorful bits of experience: From bluestocking to blue movie. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 87 (1) : 78–98. 21 pp.

Abstract

In the framework of cognitive linguistics, particularly prototype theory and cognitive semantics, and Benjamin Lee Whorf's view, as analyzed by Penny Lee (1996), that the naming of things is largely motivated by prior agreement on the components of experience that count for categorization and the relationships among them, a comparative semasiological investigation analyzes the English color term blue, its synonyms and derivatives, phraseologisms and compounds containing it, and corresponding material from five other languages: Dutch, German, Swedish, Finnish, and Hungarian. Instances of metonymy, metaphor, and other word-formation processes are catalogued in each language and compared across languages; logical relations among experiential elements associated with 'blue' are displayed in a radial network of blue referents, and six uses of the color term are attested in all languages of the sample: color, persons wearing the color, aristocratic, puritanical or abstemious, plant or animal characterized by the color, and bluish skin as an indicator of bruising, drunkenness, or cold. (LLBA, Accession Number 200608994, (c) CSA [2007]. All rights reserved.)