Abstract

Abstract: Colour words have symbolic meanings, which have been acquired over the years and through different cultures. This is why «colour» words are widely used to create new lexical units. In this article, the authors analyse an aspect of the names of colours that is relatively unstudied: their role in the shifting of meaning of a language’s new lexical units. This linguistic study is based on fundamental linguistic anthropology concepts and also on the theoretical assumptions of Cognitive Semantics. After establishing fundamental notions, the study analyses a corpus of lexicographical polylexical neologisms containing a colour word. It focuses on the analysis of those units that include the word «green». The authors’ objective is to determine the semantic mechanisms and conceptual relationships that have generated new meanings of colour words or containing a colour word. Key words: neology, shifting of meaning, semantic change, colours, metaphor, metonymy, cognitive linguistics.

Abstract

Colours play an important role in our everyday life. Yet, it is something that we might not pay too much attention to, it is just there, even if we may have our favourite colours and likewise. However, sometimes the colours have a very specific meaning and is a medium of communication. One example of this is air traffic control systems as the one used in Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Ireland, and Croatia. However, despite using the same system, all but Denmark and Sweden use different colour schemes in the human computer interface of the radar screens. A decision was taken within the common organisation, COOPANS, to change this and harmonize the colour scheme, but how will that be received by the users, the air traffic controllers? This thesis aimed at investigating how usable the controllers in the different countries, except Croatia, found the new colour scheme and how easy they thought it would be to adapt to. The question was how this was affected by the fact they are using different colour schemes today? Data was collected with questionnaires during simulations in high fidelity simulator platforms at the air traffic control centres in Malmö, Copenhagen, Vienna, and Shannon. It was found that there were some differences between the sites which could not be explained by the controlled for factors, age, gender, and experience. Among the differences found, one was that the perceived usability differed between controllers in Malmö and Copenhagen respectively. Hence, since they are using the same colours today, the differences seem to be a result of expectations and opinions about the current colour schemes rather than exactly which colour scheme that are currently used. There was also a trend that the opinions from the first impression seemed to be reinforced within the group during the simulation. The major differences however were found to be on individual level.