Sociolinguistic aspects of Old English colour lexemes

Biggam, C. P. (1995) Sociolinguistic aspects of Old English colour lexemes. Anglo-Saxon England, 24, pp. 51-65. (doi: 10.1017/S0263675100004658)

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental attempt to investigate the social contexts of certain Old English vocabulary belonging to a particular semantic field, namely that of colour. Sociolinguistic studies are concerned with language variations between social classes, age groups, the sexes and other social groupings, so it is obvious from the outset that this sort of evidence will be difficult to retrieve from a dead language. However, in the case of this particular semantic field, textual information can often be augmented by comparative evidence from the colour semantics of living languages, and by the theories about colour term acquisition and usage developed by linguists and anthropologists.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Biggam, Dr Carole
• Authors: Biggam, C. P.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics; P Language and Literature > PE English
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Language and Linguistics
• Journal Name: Anglo-Saxon England
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• ISSN: 1474-0532
• ISSN (Online): 0263-6751