Intergenerational differences in Russian color naming in the globalized era: linguistic analysis

Abstract

The present study is an apparent-time analysis of color terms in Russian native speakers (N = 1927), whose age varied between 16 and 98 years. Stratified sampling was employed with the following age groups: 16–19, 20–29, and so on, with the oldest group of 70 years and over. Color names were elicited in a web-based psycholinguistic experiment (http://colournaming.com). Participants labeled color samples (N = 606) using an unconstrained color-naming method. Color vocabulary of each age group was estimated using multiple linguistic measures: diversity index; frequency of occurrences of 12 Russian basic color terms (BCTs) and of most frequent non-BCTs; color-naming pattern. Our findings show intergenerational differences in Russian color-term vocabulary, color-naming patterns, and object referents. The CT diversity (measured by the Margalef index) progressively increments with speakers’ juniority; the lexical refinement is manifested by the increasing variety of BCT modifiers and growing use of non-BCTs, both traditional and novel. Furthermore, the most frequent Russian non-BCTs sirenevyj “lilac”, salatovyj “lettuce‐colored”, and birûzovyj “turquoise” appear to be the emerging BCTs. The greatest diversity and richness of CT inventory is observed in Russian speakers aged 20–59 years, i.e., those who constitute the active workforce and are enthusiastic consumers. In comparison, speakers of 60 and over manifest less diverse color inventory and greater prevalence of (modified) BCTs. The two youngest groups (16–29 years) are linguistic innovators: their color vocabulary includes abundant recent loanwords, predominantly from English and, not infrequently, CTs as nouns rather than adjectives. Moreover, Generation Z (16–19 years) tend to offer highly specific or idiosyncratic color descriptors that serve expressive rather than informative function. The apprehended dynamics of color naming in apparent time reflects intergenerational differences as such, but even more so dramatic changes of sociocultural reality in the post-Soviet era, whereby Russian speakers, in particular under 60 years, were/are greatly impacted by globalization of trade: new market product arrivals resulted in adoption of novel and elaboration of traditional CTs for efficient communication about perceived color

A comparative analysis of colour–emotion associations in 16–88‐year‐old adults from 31 countries

“…It is unclear whether vivid mental imagery of colours is necessary to associate colour terms with emotions (perhaps not, as even colour‐blind individuals produce similar associations; Jonauskaite et al., 2021). Older adults might also have smaller colour vocabularies (Griber et al., 2021). As we studied basic colour terms, presumably known to all speakers of a language (Berlin & Kay, 1969; Kay et al., 2009), this concern might be more applicable to the non‐basic colour term (i.e., turquoise ).…”

Augmenting a colour lexicon

“…The augmentation that we have shown for the Himba seems unlikely to be simply the result of schooling as suggested by Grandison et al (2014) but very much as if the Himba, especially the younger ones (Griber et al, 2021), have imported a green term, probably from Herero who recently started using the term ngirine (Nguaiko, 2010) instead of the earlier tarazu (Kolbe, 1883); a process we refer to as cultural transfer or simply loanwords. The centroid of the newly acquired Himba word for GREEN was indeed located at much the same place in colour space as it is in English, but it is also in the same place in the neighbouring language of Herero where its words for green and blue come from European languages (Roberson et al, 2005).…”

Постковидное Цветовосприятие: Влияние COVID-19 На Выбор Цветонаименования

“…We collected data from native Russian speakers in an online experiment (http://colournaming.com). The participants were instructed to choose most appropriate names for virtual color stimuli randomly selected by the computer program from a predefined set of samples (see, e.g., Griber et al, 2021). Participants could offer any linguistic form of a color name - a simple or a complex word, binary compounds or multi-component words.…”

“…The BCTs are to apply to diverse classes of objects and be psychologically salient to all informants implying that they occur in ideolects of all respondents and used by them with high consensus. In Russian, there are 12 BCTs; six of them are primary -čërnyj 'black', belyj 'white', krasnyj 'red', zelënyj 'green', žëltyj 'yellow', and sinij 'blue'; the remaining six categories are secondary -koričnevyj 'brown', goluboj 'light blue', rozovyj 'pink', oranževyj 'orange', fioletovyj 'purple', and seryj 'gray' (see, e.g., Griber et al, 2021).…”

“…We also hypothesized that there would be a change in the denotative meanings of the BCTs, i.e., color stimuli they denote. To test this hypothesis, we compared color naming of individuals who have recovered from COVID-19 with healthy controls' responses that had been obtained before the pandemic (Griber et al, 2021).…”