Colour and gender: language nuances

  1. Isabel Espinosa Zaragoza
Revue:
Feminismo/s
  1. Balteiro Fernández, Isabel (coord.)

ISSN: 1696-8166,  1989-9998

Année de publication: 2021

Titre de la publication: Women, sexual identity and language / Mujer, identidad sexual y lenguaje

Número: 38

Pages: 115-147

Type: Article

DOI: 10.14198/FEM.2021.38.05 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openRUA editor

D'autres publications dans: Feminismo/s

Objectifs de Développement Durable

Résumé

It is a deeply rooted belief that women possess a richer colour vocabulary than men (Rich, 1977). According to Lakoff, certain adjectives denoting colour (e.g. mauve) would never be naturally chosen by men unless they were «imitating a woman sarcastically, or a homosexual, or an interior decorator» (1973, p. 49). Are these affirmations adjusted to our present reality? Nowadays, colour is present in almost every economic sector. Consequently, a proficient use of colour vocabulary is expected from professionals, regardless of their gender. Hence, if the differences in colour vocabulary are learnt and highly dependent on the user’s necessities and expectations, then said differences after globalisation and exposure to the Internet should not be so striking. With this objective in mind, this study analyses colour elicitation performed by university students. Both their descriptive capacity and colour lexicon availability are measured depending on students’ colour terms usage. Furthermore, potential reasons for variation are provided.

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La source de données: Dialnet