METONYMY-BASED COLOUR METAPHORS EXPRESSING MIND AND BODY STATES: EVIDENCE FROM ENGLISH AND SERBIAN
METONYMY-BASED COLOUR METAPHORS EXPRESSING MIND AND BODY STATES: EVIDENCE FROM ENGLISH AND SERBIAN

Summary/Abstract: This paper studies the extended meanings of lexemes with the colour concepts RED, PINK, BLUE, GREEN and YELLOW expressing emotional, mental and physical states in English and Serbian from a cognitive linguistic perspective. The initial hypothesis is that lexemes with these colour concepts express states of the mind and/or the body, such as being angry, unrealistic or ill, and that these transferred metaphoric meanings are essentially metonymically grounded. The aims are the following: 1. to identify the conceptual metaphors associating concrete colour concepts with the abstract concepts of emotional, mental and physical states; 2. to determine the metonymic motivation of colour-related metaphors; and 3. to consider the issue of cultural universality and/or diversity. The results of the analysis show that the studied colour concepts express meanings associated with different states of the mind and/or the body, which are presented via conceptual metaphors (e.g. BEING EMBARRASSED IS BEING RED, BEING UNREALISTIC IS SEEING PINK, etc.). Furthermore, most of these metaphors are based on two metonymies: 1. COLOUR OF THE SKIN FOR THE STATE OF THE MIND/BODY, and 2. an experiential association between a particular colour and people`s psychological reaction. There are more similarities than differences between English and Serbian, which is strong grounds for believing that the studied metaphors motivated by metonymies are universal.

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