Teaching metaphorical color expressions in Modern Greek

2016

In last decades the metaphor became more and more considered as an important mean of formation of language picture if the works representing by itself the verbalized system of world view of particular nation. The objective of this research is the comparative characteristic of metaphorical symbolism of color name "red" in phraseological fund of German, Russian and Tatar languages. Phraseological and paraemiological funds are preserving information about material and spiritual culture, world view of native language speakers. Color naming often participates in formation of meaning of phraseologisms and paraemies by virtue of actualization of hidden estimate senses characteristic to them. As material of this comparative research of multi-meaning of color names acted adjectives "rot", "красный" and "кызыл" in German, Russian and Tatar linguistic cultures. We analyzed 300 set phrases with components "rot" from national corpus of German language, 207 proverbs and sayings with component "красный", 71 proverbs and sayings with component "кызыл". On the basis of analysis of lexicographic sources and data of corpus researches we came to a conclusion that red color plays an important role in perception of the surrounding world. Semantic of red color in comparing languages is characterized, on one side, by sufficiently high degree of similarity, from another side-by differences that are stipulated by cultural peculiarities, different view of the world by representatives of German, Russian and Tatar ethnic-cultural social media. Theoretical significance of the work is concluded in the fact that results of research are presenting by themselves a certain contribution in development of typological language studies, contrastive semantics, comparative-typology language studies, lexicography and cognitive theory of metaphor.

2011

Metaphorical language is an indispensable part of human life, involving language, thought and action (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1998). Accordingly, metaphor plays a major role in people's everyday language use and thinking. Our conceptual system is based on experiences we have gained with interacting with people and things surrounding us. In this respect, color plays an important role in convention metaphorical expressions in people's lives and daily communication. As a sub-category of metaphors, color terms are widely used literally and metaphorically in different languages and may also reflect cultural identities of language users.

European Journal of English Studies, 2004

Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, 2022

Color terms, especially the three primary colors, bear the weight of basic meaning of color in English and Chinese idioms and usual expressions. The same color has different meanings in different languages, thus it makes Native English speakers and Native Chinese speakers who use other foreign languages puzzled. Therefore, it is necessary to make a language and culture comparative study of the meanings of three primary colors in English and Chinese idioms and usual expressions. This essay uses metaphors and cognition to make the comparative study between color idioms and usual expressions in English and Chinese. It aims at revealing the similarities and dissimilarities of metaphorical cognitive meanings of three primary colors in English and Chinese idioms and usual expressions. This essay provides a perspective for the role of cultural variation of metaphor and plays a role in overcoming the language barriers in communication.

Lingvisticæ Investigationes. International Journal of Linguistics and Language Resources, 2012

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2014

Metaphors are ubiquitous in language and integrated in different aspects of human life, involving thought, language and action (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Accordingly, metaphorical expressions have a key role in people's daily thinking and language use. Having interaction with things and people surrounding us, we have encyclopaedic knowledge embedded in our conceptual system (Kovecses, 2002). Metaphor and metonymy, two fundamental strategies of conceptualization, affect the way we perceive reality. In this respect, colour words strengthen language influence and have a significant role in convention of metaphorical and, particularly, metonymic expressions in our lives and everyday communications. Considering a cognitive approach and Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, Lakoff 2006, Kovecses 2010) into account, this paper aims to investigate the underlying conceptual meaning involved in the construction of Persian colour-based metaphors of emotion and body parts on one hand; and to survey the interplay of linguistic expressions and cultural knowledge on the other. To do so, we collected Persian instances from some Persian dictionaries. The working hypothesis is that although THE BODY IS A CONTAINER conceptual metaphor exists in all languages, the metaphoric expressions that fill the conceptual metaphor may be understood culturally.

Cross-Cultural Communication, 2011

Metaphorical language is an indispensable part of human life, involving language, thought and action. Metaphors are used to express abstract concepts in terms of concrete entities. As a subclass of metaphoric expressions, colorbased metaphors are culture specific so much so that they are, at times, difficult to understand by non-native speakers. The current comparative study is focused on metaphoric expressions of English and Persian within Al-Hasnawi's (2007) model. The present study goes above and beyond simple metaphoric expressions of color by focusing on idioms, similes, metonymies and proverbs as long as they include at least one color term. Thus, the aims of the current study are twofold (i) to identify the extent of the diversity of the cognitive mapping between English and Persian speakers as long as color terms are concerned; (ii) to scrutinize their cognitive equivalency in translation. To do so, English examples were collected from Phillip (2006) and Allen (2008). Next, the Persian ones were searched from dictionaries in Persian. The findings of this comparative analysis show that, although there is some similarity in cognitive mapping between English and Persian, the majority of metaphorical expressions are culture-bound. Such expressions are orientated toward different mapping conditions. Considering cognitive equivalency, the results indicate that there is only a relative equivalency between English and Persian.

The paper presents a short a study on etymology of words for basic colors in Vietnamese. It is shown that lexicon of basic colors was derived mainly through metaphor, which results from observation of a phenomenon, an object, an act, or a living creature, and its associated or defining features or characteristics. The process of metaphoring could be undertaken over a period of time in the past by speakers of many different languages or dialects, that eventually evolved and merged into the Vietnamese language, modified through quốc-ngữ codification using Latin alphabet.

In teaching languages, if we only consider direct relationship between form and meaning in language and leave psycholinguistic aside, this approach is not a successful practice and language learners won't be able to make a successful relation in the real contexts. The present study intends to answer this question: is the teaching method in which salient meaning is taught more successful than the method in which literal or figurative meaning is taught or not? To answer the research question, 30 students were selected. Every ten people are formed as a group and three such groups were formed. Twenty figurative expressions were taught to every group. Group one was taught the figurative meaning of every expression. Group two was taught the literal meaning and group three was taught the salient meaning. Then three groups were tested. After analyzing data, we concluded that there was a significant difference in mean grades between classes and the class trained under graded salience hypothesis was more successful. This shows that traditional teaching methods must be revised.

Fachsprache, 2019

This study aims to identify the similarities and differences between English and Arabic color-based metaphorical expressions, to identify translation students' difficulties and their translation strategies. A corpus of English and Arabic color-based metaphorical expressions was collected and compared. It was found that English and Arabic color-based metaphorical expressions fall into five categories: (i) those that are identical in form and meaning in both languages; (ii) those that are the same in meaning but differ in form, (iii) those that are identical in form but different in meaning; (iv) those that exist in English but have no equivalents in Arabic; and (v) those that exist in Arabic but have no equivalents in English. Students' responses to a color-metaphor test showed that the students translated fewer than 25 % correctly and left many items blank. Color-based metaphorical expressions similar in both languages were easy to translate such as black list, red line, green light, whereas opaque ones were difficult. Literal translation was the most common translation strategy. Implications for translation pedagogy are given.