Russian Linguistic Bulletin (Dec 2017)
SYMBOLIC MEANINGS OF PRIMARY COLOURS IN ANGLO-SAXON CULTURE
Abstract
The article deals with the linguistic and cultural aspect of forming basic colour names of Anglo-Saxon culture. The aim of the article is to identify and reveal as the evidential base a number of etymological data as well as those ones of historical and cultural experience of Anglo-Saxons, connected with colour naming of objects and phenomena. As a result, the existing point of view, that there is a great number of universal features that can be observed in any colour naming system, is opposed. It is successfully proved in the given paper that it is obviously possible to find certain features characteristic only for a concrete linguistic and colour picture of the world. Respectively, the role of the basic colours is defined in forming a color picture of the world which in its turn becomes a part of the language one, reflecting cultural and conceptual pictures of the world.
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