Communicating With Color: Color as a Linguistic and Cultural Sign

Abstract

From this short review of colour terms relations in the two languages, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and English, it can be concluded that there are similarities in creating meaning in the two cultures when it comes to colours, but also differences, when associative meanings don’t correspond. Sometimes solutions in English are lexems that are not colour-related, or a different metaphore is used with the colour term. However, meaning is preserved and can be transposed thanks to mapping, or by using those elements of meaning that in English have the same connotation like the one that were starting points in the original language. That means that communication is possible, although it sometimes means leaving the concept of colour in the target language.