Part of
Colour Studies: A broad spectrumEdited by Wendy Anderson, Carole P. Biggam, Carole Hough and Christian Kay
[Not in series 191] 2014
► pp. 109–125
Edited by Wendy Anderson, Carole P. Biggam, Carole Hough and Christian Kay
[Not in series 191] 2014
► pp. 109–125
Her blue eyes are red
An idealized cognitive model of conceptual color metonymy in English
The lexical frame of color as a primary experience is often used to exemplify linguistic theories and yet there is still a lack of a cognitive color model. Cognitive linguistics establishes meaning in a central role through the ideas of embodied experience and cognitive models that are evinced through usage-based analysis. I present the fifth type of distinction in a conceptual mapping of color in English; four types have been presented earlier in Sandford (2010, 2011a and 2011b). The new part of this mapping is Conceptual Color Metonymy, based on one hundred random examples of each of six basic color terms extracted from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. An idealized cognitive model of conceptual color metonymy mapping reveals primary conceptual correlations in experience, and the predominant conceptualization mechanism pattern that emerged from this study is color attribute (is access) for conceptual space.
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