Colour and gender: language nuances

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

ISSN: 1696-8166,  1989-9998

Ano de publicación: 2021

Título do exemplar: Women, sexual identity and language / Mujer, identidad sexual y lenguaje

Número: 38

Páxinas: 115-147

Tipo: Artigo

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

Outras publicacións en: Feminismo/s

Obxectivos de Desenvolvemento Sustentable

Resumo

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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Fonte de datos: Dialnet