How the word crimson represents complex emotional experiences in its core contexts

What is it about?

.By carefully looking at the contexts from COCA we provide arguments in favour of treating the meaning of crimson, noun and adjective, as words that are consistently used to convey a rich complex of emotions in a variety of contexts. We identify three core senses for crimson: ambivalent, positive and negative and highlight how and why these two words are used in these senses in different speech genres. We claim that words used as names of colours should be studied as markers of psycho-emotional experiences rather than units of 'denotation' referring to a specific set of chromatic properties of objects.

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Why is it important?

The study contributes to the understaing of meaning in language as a representation of human nature and human responses gained through evaluative experience. It offers a more systematic approach to polysemy in Wittgensteinian terms and supports the relativist approach to the significance of colour in human exeprience, also stressing that the experience of colour is language specific and varies in different speech genres.

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