Abstract
It is a deeply rooted belief that women possess a richer colour vocabulary than men (Rich, 1977). According to Lakoff, certain adjectives denoting colour (e.g. mauve) would never be naturally chosen by men unless they were «imitating a woman sarcastically, or a homosexual, or an interior decorator» (1973, p. 49). Are these affirmations adjusted to our present reality? Nowadays, colour is present in almost every economic sector. Consequently, a proficient use of colour vocabulary is expected from professionals, regardless of their gender. Hence, if the differences in colour vocabulary are learnt and highly dependent on the user’s necessities and expectations, then said differences after globalisation and exposure to the Internet should not be so striking. With this objective in mind, this study analyses colour elicitation performed by university students. Both their descriptive capacity and colour lexicon availability are measured depending on students’ colour terms usage. Furthermore, potential reasons for variation are provided.
Highlights
Colour terms are linguistic signs assigned to certain visual stimuli that could be arranged in enclosed colours spaces or macro-categories
The results reveal a wider variety of colour terminology to describe female clothing, especially in colours red, white and purple
Similar to Simpson and Tarrant (1991) and Greene and Gynther (1995) results when it comes to hobbies, females displayed a higher array of colour-related hobbies13
Summary
Colour terms are linguistic signs assigned to certain visual stimuli that could be arranged in enclosed colours spaces or macro-categories. The study of colour will always be interdisciplinary owing to its ubiquitous nature. It involves different areas of knowledge, such as vision and perception, symbolism and meaning, colour associations and emotions, colour categorization, among many others. Language for specific purposes acknowledges different colour terms depending on the industry they belong to (e.g. automobile sector (Bergh, 2007), cosmetics and selfcare (Wyler, 1992; Skorinko et al, 2006, Merskin, 2007), fashion (Stoeva-Holm, 2007), winery (Mioduszewska, 2014), etc.), its pervasiveness may be unconsciously and unintentionally contributing to enlarging our colour lexicon. We are constantly exposed to fancy-sounding colour terms through advertising and other culture-related tasks –such as one’s job, hobbies and interests– which might conform and integrate a different sized colour vocabulary: one where the colour spectrum is divided into more spaces, and more colour labels
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