Positive and Negative Connotation of Phraseological Units with a Colour Component (the Case Study of the English Language)

Formulation of the problem. One of the main human senses is a vision of the world in colour. Each person receives a lot of information through the work of the senses. It is well-known that the work of the organs of visual perception is universal for each person and it doesn’t matter what language he or she speaks.

Each language has its own colour scheme which reflects the features of mentality, history of the people, culture and the world of view. Colour has a complex range of symbolic meanings that reveal the inner world of people of different culture. Moral and aesthetic categories, estimates of human activity are expressed with the help of colour.

Analysis of recent publications. The lexical and semantic group of coloured objects is studied by many linguists. The following issues are revealed in linguistic scientific literature:

– associative linguistic picture of the world (K.V. Abazova ^[1], E.N. Alymova ^[4];

– composition of colour terms, their semantic structure (N.R. Lopatina ^[15], I..P. Ustinova ^[17]);

– etymology and the history of colour vocabulary (S.S. Alekseev ^[2]);

– colour terms in translation (R.V. Alimpieva ^[3], D.N. Borisova ^[9], E.V. Lyukina ^[16], E.V. Shevchenko ^[18]);

– colour metaphors (N.A. Zavyalova, A.I. Isaev ^[12]);

– psycholinguistic significance of words (A.P. Vasilevich ^[10], B.A. Bazyma ^[7]).

Evaluation analysis from the point of view of positive and negative contents of English phraseological units with a colour component was not previously conducted.

Statement of basic material. The phraseology reflects the history and centuries-old experience of the people’s labour and spiritual activities, their religious beliefs and moral values. The world of feelings, images, assessments are captured in phraseology. It is connected with the culture of the language in the most direct way. Phraseology encompasses modern language formations, words, forms, constructions.

Phraseological units are a very bright, original form of registration of the national experience of native speakers, a colourful reflection of extralinguistic reality. They are exponents of cultural signs. The image of a person is true and it is significant for the English cultural tradition. Phraseological units characterize certain features of human appearance, style, behavior, intelligence, moral qualities ^[5].

The language is an important means of concentrating information about the world and at the same time it acts as the most important feature of definite nation. The mentality of the people, their psychology, customs and morals are most clearly are expressed in language. It is the way of creating national literature, the main keeper of information about peoples. The most numerous group of phrases contain characteristics of a person for one or another feature. ‘Colour terms’ in the composition of phraseological units often convey the value characteristics of a person ^[13].

The semantic structure of the values of one or another colour meaning is a multilevel structure. The semantic range of all the colour meaning of any language includes both positive and so on negative connotations, in the basis of which lie archetypal the notions of colour, caused by the primary associations and its experience experiences of a person, as well as naturally physiologically conditioned values.

Units with colour component occupy an important place in the phraseological fund of the English language. Due to the fact that the colour-naming system is widely developed nowadays, each colour has a wide semantics and is used in the description of a variety of phenomena of surrounding reality. Semantic oppositions are formed between separate meanings of colours.

The colour terms that are part of the phraseological units are used not only literally, but also in their figurative meaning, they are distinguished, as a rule, by a high degree of expressiveness and, as means of stylistic expressiveness, carry a positive or negative evaluation ^{[8, c. 26–31]}.

Let’s study the phraseological units which contain the following colour components: red, blue, white, black, pink, purple, green, rose, yellow. Having a different structure, these types of phraseological units perform the same stylistic function: the creation of a high degree of clarity and emotionality. This group has a variety of shades of varying degrees of expressiveness. The phraseological units with the colour component according to the role of red, blue, white, black, pink, green, rose, yellow components in the formation of the positive and negative values of the idioms were classified and systematized.

Such colours as red, blue, white, black, pink, purple, green, rose, yellow besides the main colour characteristic have a significant number of derived portable positive meaning.

1. Red:

– paintthetownred: отмечать какое-либо событие шумно и весело;

– red-hot: интенсивный, возбужденный или восторженный; очень свежий или выдающийся, новый;

– red-letterday: особенно важный или счастливый день;

– red-carpettreatment: уважение, проявляемое к высокопоставленным лицам;

2. Blue:

– true-blue: непоколебимый-лояльный и верный;

– blue-ribbon: высшего качества, известность;

3. White:

– whiteheat: этап интенсивной активности, волнения, чувства;

– whitelie: милая, вежливая или безвредная ложь;

– to be whiter than white: быть предельно честным;

4. Rosy:

– rose-coloredglasses: веселый или оптимистичный взгляд на вещи, как правило, без уважительной основы;

– rosy: яркий или перспективный; веселый или оптимистичный;

5. Green:

– get the green light: получить разрешение;

– greenthumb: исключительная способность к садоводству или успешному выращиванию растений;

– a green old age: полный юношеских сил;

6. Pink:

– tickled pink: очень довольный;

– inthepink: здоровье, в хорошем состоянии;

7. Purple:

– born to the purple: знатного рода ^[6].

From the analysis it is clear that the more common colors in phraseological phrase with a positive shade are white, red green.

The phraseological units with the same colour components may carry a negative evaluation.

1. Red:

– caughtred-handed: пойманный с поличным на месте преступления;

– red-faced: краснея от смущения, гнева;

– inthered: работать с убытком или иметь долг;

2. Blue:

– talk a blue streak: говорить непрерывно, быстро или бесконечно;

– blue-pencil: изменить, уменьшить или отменить;

– blue study: мрачное раздумье;

3. White:

– whitewash: обманчивые слова или действия, используемые для скрытия какого-либо факта;

– to be white-hot: быть разъяренным, доведенным до белого каления;

– white feather: трус;

4. Purple:

– purpleprose: привлекающий внимание c использованием определенных эффектов преувеличения или пафоса;

5. Black:

– blacklist: список лиц, подозреваемых или недоброжелательных;

– blackmail: платеж, вымогаемый запугиванием, угрозами;

– blackmarket: покупка и продажа товаров в нарушение законодательного регулирования цен;

– blacksheep человек, который вызывает стыд или смущение из-за его / ее отклонения от стандартов группы;

– blackball: исключить социальное; голосовать или отклонять;

6. Green:

– greenhorn: неподготовленный, неопытный или наивный человек;

– greenaroundthegills: иметь болезненный вид; бледный;

– green with envy: очень ревнивый;

– green-eyed monster: ревность;

7. Pink:

– pinkslip: уведомление об увольнении;

8. Yellow:

– to have a yellow streak: быть трусливым ^[14].

As shown in the analysis of the semantics of phraseological units with a colour component that is part of stable phraseological combinations, a semantic shift can be noted. Many names of colour, in addition to the main colour characteristic, have a significant number of derived positive and negative derived values.

There is a clear trend for colour components which have a sufficiently strong emotional impact on a person. Red, black, white, green, blue, to a lesser degree – pink, yellow are stood out among such components that are capable of causing a large number of associations and, as a result, participate in the formation of a large number of phraseological units of different semantics. The following topics are traced in phraseological units with a positive value: joy, health, success and the best qualities of a person. The themes of phraseological units with the opposite meaning are as follows: offense, crime, illness, failure.

It can be concluded that the white colour in English phraseology mainly reflects positive emotions. Phraseological units with a black, red and blue component have more negativity. Yellow colour in phraseology is extremely rare.

Human qualities which are expressed through colour can be both negative and positive. One of the reasons for the wide use of colour names in phraseological units with negative estimated value is the desire to avoid the direct naming of negative phenomena, in particular negative qualities, or emotions of a man.

Conclusion. Colour name as a part of the phraseological unit can not only affect the overall value, which is quite natural, but also performs a sense-differentiating function. Phraseological units can express the idea more capaciously and also they convey the attitude, assessment of certain qualities of a person, his actions and his attitude to the world around him. We can summarize that such a phenomenon as colour covers all aspects of human life, and the same concept can acquire both a positive and a negative assessment. This multifaceted concept provides many opportunities to learn not only the language, but also helps to understand the perception of the different cultures of the world. This knowledge can be used not only in linguistics, but also in psychology. The study of colour as a fragment of English conceptual and language pictures of the world on the material of the artistic texts can be considered as our further research.