A psycholinguistic contrastive study of colour terms in French, Italian and German causal constructions

One of the strengths of Cognitive Linguistics is that it sees language as closely linked to cognition (Dirven and Ruiz de Mendoza Ibanez 2010), it « approaches language as an integrated part of human cognition which operates in interaction with and on the basis of the same principles as other cognitive faculties » (Dirven 2004: 1). Because of this strong link it is only too natural that language should be explored in relation with its speakers and with the cognitive processes that these undergo when using language. The present contrastive study will explore the conceptualization of colours in different speech communities, and more specifically as they are realized in causal constructions of the type Je suis rouge de colère (lit. ‘I am red of rage’= ‘I am red with rage’), Il est bleu de linguistique (lit.‘He is blue of linguistics’ = ‘He is crazy about/loves linguistics’), Er ist grün vor Neid (lit.‘He is green of jealousy’= ‘He is green with jealousy’),… The first part of the presentation will describe such causal constructions with colour terms in the framework of Goldberg’s model of Construction Grammar (1995, 2006) and with reference to the concepts of metaphor and metonymy (Niemeier 1998, 2007). It is interesting to realize that colour terms are associated with positive or negative values when used in the particular causal construction under discussion. The theoretical part of the presentation will also describe related constructions, i.e. causal constructions with a non-colour adjective, e.g. Il est fou d’amour, lit. ‘He is crazy of love’, but also non-causal constructions with the same syntactic elements, i.e. Elle est belle de visage, lit. ‘She is pretty of the face’ (= ‘She has a pretty face’) (compare Frei 1939 and Salles 1998). A quick test allows to realize that associations related to colour terms can be very different dependent on the speech community. The colour term blue is positive in the French construction quoted above, whereas it is rather negative in a German example, e.g. Er ist blau vor Kälte (lit. ‘He is blue of the cold). Moreover, it seems that French uses lots of colour terms in the causal construction, whereas German or even the other Romance language Italian use them more scarcely. The talk will compare the use of colour terms in such constructions in the two Romance languages, i.e. French and Italian, and the Germanic language German and will show which associations and underlying conceptualizations are related to the colour terms in particular speech communities (see also Danesi 2008). The study is based on some empirical tests conducted with French, Italian and German speakers. In a first test the 3 test groups were asked to determine whether a particular colour is associated with a positive, negative or neutral value. In a further associative test they were asked to link a particular emotion (e.g. happiness, jealousy, anger, rage, …) to a specific colour. In a last test they were asked to think of emotions which they would associate with a particular colour. The study aims at showing the different conceptualizations underlying the constructions with colour terms, the different associations related to colour terms and the possible overlappings between different languages. It will also allow to explain why foreign language learners may have difficulties when learning foreign colour expressions (see Danesi 2008): the associations related to a particular colour and the particular use of colour terms in specific constructions, e.g. the causal construction, seem to be language-specific. References Berlin, Brent & Kay, Paul (1969). Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bochnakowa, Anna (1990). L’adjectif de couleur dans les syntagmes nominaux en français et en polonais. In Andrzej Maria Lewicki & Marek Kesik (1990) (eds.), Syntagmes nominaux dans les langues romanes et slaves, Actes du Colloque International de linguistique organisé par l’Université Marie-Curie-Skłodowska, Lublin, S. 7-24. 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