Metaphor, Metonymy, the Body and the Environment: An Exploration of the Factors That Shape Emotion-Colour Associations and their Variation across Cultures

By exploring the complex and emotional relationship of humans and colour in depth, looking at how it varies across languages, exploring the explanations that people provide for the associations that they make, and analysing them through the lens of metaphor, this Element gains more insights into the different ways in which humans express emotions through colour, and the reasons why they do so. Metaphoric (and metonymic) language and thought play a key role on several levels in the formation of emotion-colour associations. A strong metaphorical connection between the valence of the emotion and the lightness of the colours with which it is associated and between the intensity of an emotion and the saturation level of the colours with which it is associated is found. However, the strength of this association varies according to the linguistic background of the speaker, and according to the gender in which the emotion is presented.