Филологические науки/ 3. Теоретические и методологические проблемы исследования языка

Аметова А. Н., Татарникова И. В.

Таврический национальный университет им. В. И. Вернадского, г. Симферополь

Peculiarities of the semantic content of colour denotations in commercial advertisements

The investigation of the semantic content and functional peculiarities of colour denotations in commercial advertisements appears to be a challenging aspect of present-day linguistics. The importance of this study is vivid when one considers the role of colour designation in commercial catalogues representing such products as clothes, footwear and cosmetics. Products of the same range sold through these catalogues (such as eye shadows, lipsticks, nail polish etc.) are as a rule differentiated by the colour which in its turn often involves pricy fluctuations.
From this perspective colour denotation in commercial catalogues acquires an informative function. Even though the printing quality of catalogues may be really high, it primarily relies on text data. Alongside with fulfilling the informative function colour denotation has an emotional impact on potential buyers’ view of the product. In advertisements the thematic group of colour is verbalized through the usage of special lexemes. These lexemes are referred to in the following investigation as colour denotations, colour designations, colour denoting vocabulary, colour terms.

The research has been done by analysing advertisements in cosmetics catalogues such as AVON (12/2006) [1], Oriflame (12/2010) [2], Faberlic (04/2010) [3].

The study makes it possible to formulate the following hypothetical assertions. Words denoting colours have become more and more studied. It can be accounted for by the necessity of this phenomenon, the studying of which is arisen from different colour perception by different nations and cultures. Research methods which have been chosen are motivated by the object to the peculiarity of the analysis. During the initial stage of the investigation which dealt with material selection, experimental and descriptive methods have been used. Afterwards more specific methods have been employed, namely componential analysis (to define the structure and composition of semantic fields), semantic analysis (to identify the semantic content of a unit), and contextual analysis (to investigate the functioning of colour units in different texts). The topicality of this study becomes obvious if one takes into account all the facts enumerated above. The study analyses lexemes containing colour denotations thus making its contribution to phraseology and lexicology and enriching general linguistic knowledge.

Even a superficial theoretical insight shows that words denoting colour are a well-defined group of adjectives which denote colour. There are several factors which influence its stability. These factors are of a different nature, some of them are purely linguistic (semantic) while others appear to be extra-linguistic (cultural stereotypes) [1].

The purpose of this paper is to identify the emotional impact and linguocultural features of CDs as special kind of lexemes in the English language in commercial catalogues representing cosmetic products.

The object of analysis in this paper are colour designations (CDs) in Russian and English advertising discourse, represented in commercial cosmetic catalogues. The particular attention is paid to the national-cultural and discursive specificity of a CD. The aim of examining CDs in advertising cosmetic items is related to the frequency of use of colour in their nomination, with the active application of unusual CDs.

The problem of studying colour denotation in linguistics is closely related to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or hypothesis of linguistic relativity, which originated in American linguistics under the influence of research conducted by E. Sapir and B. Whorf [2]. From their point of view, the language and mentality of the people are interrelated. While mastering the language a native speaker acquires a definite attitude to the world around him/her, which is reflected in words and the structures of word combinations of the native speaker’s language [3], [4].

The consequence of the recognition of the linguistic relativity hypothesis is the recognition that the language keeps a set of values, which are common to all bearers of the language. In other words, in the minds of the speakers there are some basic prototypical referents, which he/she uses when naming a particular colour [5]. There arises the so-called model of an associative row, where one associates colours with objects in reality ("a colour, as ...") e.g., brown is the colour of cinnamon; e.g. navy is navy-coloured clothing, etc. Thus, we can speak about the differences in colour perception in different cultures (green in the USA is associated with military service and safety, in France – with committing a crime, in most of German languages it, in its turn, has the meaning of fun and joy). However, we can assume that such archaic thinking was characteristic of a particular syncretic awareness.

There appear to be different opinions concerning what should be considered as the basis of colour denotation. As a refutation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, British scholars B. Berlin and P. Kay [6] conducted a series of experiments and came to the conclusion that the origin and development of CDs in different languages testify to the difference of certain linguistic universals. According to the point of view of these scholars, 95% of colours come from the names of objects and only 5% of all colour words have no clear etymology. Among their findings there are universal prototypes which constitute the eleven main colour designations.

P. Berlin and B. Kay’s study employs two procedures for the application of the rule limiting the colour designations under consideration [7]. The first procedure, i.e. "colour" classification, consists in the partitioning of perceptual space of CDs, notions of tone, intensity and saturation (thus narrowing the spectrum of the referential concept of "colour" as it is understood, in at least some cultures). The second procedure contains examining all colour categories, the linguistic expression of which doesn’t correspond to the above-mentioned criteria.

The subgroup of colours is not homogeneous. Some words indicating colour denote it as their primary (informative) meaning (e.g. red, blue, yellow etc.) and some of them denote it as their secondary, figurative meaning (coral red, sky blue), but nevertheless these words are fixed in the linguistic system. There are two semantic subgroups in this group. They are colours proper (red, blue, green etc.) and hues (dark, light, faded, rich etc.) [8].

Adjectives denoting supplementary colour characteristics carry out their function through contextual proximity with colours proper or with words which contextually denote colours (e.g. темная синева неба, eng. sheer pale pink, metro mauve, mocha shimmer, fluorine metallic etc.). When taken separately, these words lose their colour denotation or become synonyms with colours proper.

Considering various aspects of the phenomenon of colour, specialists often ignore the depth, historical and cultural experience of people. People can be characterized by a constant desire to describe things and events that surround them. Despite the obvious connection to human neurophysiology, the importance of colour names (as symbols of emotion denotation) represents the artifacts of culture. Colourful representation of objects surrounding us is a significant component of the linguistic world. Therefore scholars consider colour denotation as one of the most attractive groups from the lexical point of view [9].

Linguists, typologists, etymologists, lexicologists, semasiologists after studying dozens of languages have come to the conclusion that the system of colour denotation possesses universal features. Moreover, various attitudes to a particular hue or colour are reflected in figurative expressions, idioms and sayings that exist in the language as the concept of accumulating specific national character, which contains socio-historical, intellectual, emotional information [10].

Due to its natural significance for people, colour depends on the importance of an object or phenomenon, which was provided with this colour not being perceived aesthetically, and the words, naming it, were not using depictions of the world [11]. Hence, the weak saturation of a text by colour terms occurred.

Generally speaking, the colour palette is regarded as one of the semantic parameters finding significanсe in the organization of verbal and nonverbal meaningful components in a text [12]. Understanding the importance of colour and its ability to expose inherent appropriate cultural and emotional connotations is of great importance for the system of the semantic analysis of an advertisement. Colours and colour combinations help to perceive the tone of the message, its gist and cause the needed reaction from the consumer’s side, i.e. stimulate his/her buying habits and purchase requirement. This helps creators of commercial English-language texts to use this technique creating advertising texts which influence our subconsciousness.

As for the semantic structure of colour terms in advertising, it has two components: an informative component, reflecting the real properties of a denotatum and a figurative one [13]. The informative component is realized through words, the meaning of which contains the seme of colour. Apart from this fact, colour terms have the function of influence and effect on the reader – no matter how much high the printing quality of the catalogue pages is, the choice of the consumer is based on the textual (informative) component. As an example one can take primary and secondary colour designations (red, green – cherry red, lettuce green) or substantives formed from those colour terms (redness, greenery). Sometimes there can also exist such a kind of lexemes which do not contain any seme of colour in their lexical structure, but denote such objects and phenomena, that in consumers’ consciousness are associated with one concrete colour psychologically (e.g. snow, melon, dawn, etc).

In its turn, the sense of the figurative component is to express its entry in a base layer of the cultural aspect of the language. It is generally characteristic for the English language to be the language which reflects culture and social consciousness of the native speakers. It traditionally correlates colours with emotions and impressions. The colour is objectively given in reality. But in advertising it is shown through metaphors and similes. As a rule, they have positive connotations, thus creating in the buyers’ mind the connection “goods – pleasure”. These metaphors are based on different levels of consciousness, e.g. sensual, notional, emotional, level of values and morals. However, it is obvious that different languages reflect the reality in different ways, but there are some generalizations in the so-called thematic groups of colour denotations (jewels and precious metals, flowers, fruits, sweets, vine, spicery, natural phenomena, fabric/textile, psychophysiologic state of a person, and others). In this connection there are certain differences in perception of colour bearers of a particular linguistic culture [14].

The group of CDs itself is heterogeneous: in one category of lexemes there are primary CDs where the meaning of the colour value is major and direct (blue, yellow); in another category of lexemes – secondary CDs – the colour value is a portable (cherry, coral), but nonetheless it is also enshrined in the language system. These also include substantives formed from them (blue, green), and substantives, which are formed from secondary CDs (coral, lilac, cherry, delicate, petunia, dynamo, cotton candy, sand, butterscotch, amethyst, bikini). There also exist lexemes which do not have the structure of their lexical meaning in the seme of colour, but denote such objects and phenomena, the notion of which in human consciousness is associated only with one colour (snow, pine needles, melon, sunset, emerald). A feature of the use of primary colour denotations is that some "classical" CD actively functioning in the classical literary texts never occur in advertising texts (e.g., fixation of adjectives crimson, purple, gray in the language) [15]. Secondary CDs in the linguistic world are even more subjective. If the primary CD is communication - oriented rational processing of information about colour, then the secondary CD holds different colour images, which is a consequence of emotional and sensory index corresponding fragments from the primary stage [16].

In other words, the secondary CDs reflect the national-cultural specificity of representations of a linguistic community about colour and its role in human life, as well as the specifics of linguistic associations, which forms the basis of formation of CDs’ shades of meaning, which are used by a given society [14].

The colour embodies the possibility of logical and sensibly-shaped ways of the perception of the world. This characteristic of colour is important for philosophy, because colour in this case can be regarded as a translation of non-verbal (sensually shaped) thinking on the verbal level.

In addition, psychologists associate colour with human emotions: each emotion occupies its definite place in the colour spectrum, i.e. each emotion corresponds to a particular colour and each colour strictly corresponds to certain emotions.

As S. Uporova [17] noted, in linguistics, a systematic approach which could help to classify colour denoting vocabulary in accordance with its importance for the linguists, has not yet been elaborated. In connection with this, the following facts appear to be important:

1) the notion “colour terms” is originally emotionally tinged, as they do not simply denote colour, but also seek to express our attitude towards it (e.g., red – rage or love, black – something bad/indecent, white – something good/decent, green – somebody inexperienced; black, green, red, white in some cases develop negative associations in comparison with gold, rose, silver, white which express positive impressions);

2) the colour can be expressed explicitly (by directly naming the colour or the colour indication – blue, white, green), and implicitly (by naming the colour indication of the object which is fixed in the life or the culture at the level of tradition – bisque, petal pink, berry, peach, freezing) [17].

Speaking about the structure of this CD group, it is worth noting that the essential function of colour designation, used in commercial advertisements in recent years, is the function of exposure. In our view, the distinctive feature of colour designation brings about the formation of a new system of values in a consumer. It is based primarily on changes in the public perception of the world. Firstly, these changes are connected with the inclusion of our society in the global process of internationalization and the knowledge of people as a part of the "civilized" world, and, secondly, with the focus on the Western system of cultural and moral values, as well as European and American models of economic development, science and technology [18]. At the same time there is a trend of the revival of spiritual traditions, cultural values and social realities, lost in the course of history, in which case we can speak of modifying an ordinary picture of the world as reflected in natural language.

Nominally, the main component in the CD which is connected with the adjective is a noun. It defines morphological peculiarities of the word combination (e.g., shimmering bronze, iced coffee, rose quartz, rich ginger, blossom shine). According to the research conducted by Ukrainian scholars [19], about 40% of English lexemes (called primary colour terms) have been formed from nouns (brick, buff, golden, orange, tobacco, salmon), while in the Ukrainian language such a pattern occurs only in 5% of cases. There is a view that secondary colour terms can also belong to the group of nouns (amethyst, amaranth, carrot, cobalt, coffee, cognac, indigo, malachite, peach, sand, snow, tomato, tobacco, violet). This fact can be accounted for by the following proof – according to English word derivation patterns, in word combinations like raspberry colour the first word being an attribute, is not an adjectival word though it is translated into Russian and Ukrainian as an adjective, but not as a noun.

The English language has shown its full viability in response to new social conditions. The disappearance of pre-existing restrictions and prohibitions opened its considerable potential in the designation of colour. However, one should bear in mind that excessive freedom can have negative consequences.

In conclusion, although there were undoubtedly some problems connected with the questions arisen, it is important to mention that the language itself will always be a means of expressing the reality, the concentration of the information about the world surrounding us. It is one of the most important factors showing the readers the psychology of this or that nation.

The results of the research show that CDs are of primary importance in the idiomatic view of the world of the English language and in the world of advertising as well. The emotional impact is created through various metaphors, word combinations, associations and phraseological units. The study analysed units containing colour denotations thus making its contribution to phraseology and lexicology and enriching general linguistic knowledge.

Speaking about perspectives in this study, it is worth mentioning that further research in this direction will bring about deeper understanding of exceptional opportunities concerning the combination of both visual and verbal aspects in words denoting colours in advertising. The attention of linguists is mainly focused on the tendency to extend the lexico-semantic field of the colour and the ways of the practical realisation of this tendency in language practice, including different types of discourse, especially in the commercial one.

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