Tożsamość językowa w epoce globalnej unifikacji
Linguistic identity in the age of global unification

Selected semantic and pragmatic problems in the case of terms containing colour metaphors in Russian and Polish

Author(s): Olga Lesicka
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: identity; metaphor; term; semantics; connotation; colour
Summary/Abstract: The majority of national languages participate in so-called language contacts. In practice this implies interaction between them and increased process of adapting new borrowings in the language system. Nowadays, in the conditions of global communication, these processes often cause fear of significant impact on national languages and their cultural heritage. I will try to find out how considerable this impact is by conducting a brief analysis of metaphors containing the component of colour. The special character of this material stems from the fact that these linguistic units combine attributes of two subsystems of language – terms, as basic elements of languages for specific purposes, and metaphors, as an element of a standard/literary language. The motif of colour as a metaphor carrier is often used in the economic terminology, which is proven by my own research on this group of terms in Russian, Polish and English. The reason for this is that connotations associated with specified colours are complementary with information contained in the terms and are highly culturally conditioned. The purpose of this brief analysis, therefore, is to determine whether the colour component used in a particular term can be properly perceived both by specialists and other users of a particular language, embedded in a definite cultural context.

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