Cool, Warm, Dark, Light, or Afterimage: Dimensions and Connotations of Conceptual Color Metaphor / Metonym

This research investigates the use of color lexicon in English. Conceptual color metaphor / metonym (CCMM) and our semantic frame of color are motivated through the embodied co-occurrence of color experience as light (RGB) and as pigment / substance (RYB [CYM]). Conceptual perceptive mapping establishes a cognitive mechanism to accommodate the positive and negative connotations in relation to both conventional and non-conventional color items. Fifty participants assessed 143 items in four color tasks, involving the eleven universal basic color terms. The items were divided between the visual and the linguistic aspect: color metaphor and color metonym. This paper investigates the results in the hue dimension in comparison with the dimensions of saturation (warm-cool) and value (light-dark). Furthermore, the presence of a linguistic and a visual ‘afterimage’ effect is analyzed. CCMM theory helps explain how individuals conceptualize and categorize opponent polysemic association functions in the parallel signal / symbol cognitive processing of color and color language.