Gerontolinguistics of color: research overview

Abstract

The goal of this article is an overview of the existing research in the area of gerontolinguistics of color – a new branch of linguistic science, conterminous with gerontolinguistics and linguistics of color, which studies the state of the lexis for color designations in vocabulary of the senior and elderly people. The author meticulously examines the works that discuss sizes and boundaries of separate color categories, complexity of color designation lexis in the speech of different generations of native speakers of a certain language, intergenerational dynamics of color designations, inappropriate usage of color terms by senior people, and possibilities of modeling of age-related physiological changes in the color vision. The search of sources was conducted through the following systems: Russian Science Citation Index, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science. In the course of research, the author applied methods of theoretical and comparative analysis, systematization and generalization of materials. The scientific novelty consists in the comprehensive overview of scientific publications in the area of gerontolinguistics of color from the perspective of comparison of the topics, empirical scope, methods and methodology of studying color vocabulary of the senior population. The author’s special contribution lies in determination and description of the established trends in explaining senior changes in the color vocabulary, as well as discussion of further development prospects of the toolset of experimental research.