FIGURATIVE CONSTITUENTS OF THE CONCEPT COLOR IN SPANISH AND UKRAINIAN (BASED ON FICTION TEXTS)

Abstract

The article features the results of a contrastive analysis of the figurative characteristics of color terms as elements of the conceptual worldview of Spaniards and Ukrainians. In this regard we consider the following topics: concept COLOR as a cross-object of conceptology, linguistic culture and discourse; color terms as an element of the conceptual worldview of Spaniards and Ukrainians; ethno-specific contrasts of the figurative constituents of the color terms black, white, red, blue, yellow, green in Spanish and Ukrainian in fiction. This study explores the linguocultural concept of COLOR from the cognitive, ethno-cultural and discursive perspectives, and therefore the concept can be considered as the subject matter of such disciplines as anthropology, linguocultural science and discourse theory. The corpus of the study was formed using the continuous sampling method from multi-genre prose written by contemporary Spanish (Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Camilo José Cela, Gabriel García Márquez) and Ukrainian (Yurii Andrukhovych, Lyubko Deresh, Oksana Zabuzhko) writers. A common feature of the color term black in Spanish and Ukrainian fiction is its use in the description of human blood and its altered states. The color terms black and white characterizing such concepts as NIGHT, DEATH, EYES can be observed in the individual authors’ worldview of Spanish-speaking and Ukrainian writers despite the non-contiguous nature of the two languages and cultures. In the Spanish linguistic culture, the color term blue is used as an image of DEATH and LONELINESS, whereas in Ukrainian – as an image of RAGE, TENSION and ILLNESS.