Phraseology of emotions in colours: the art of communication and pedagogical implications

Abstract

The phraseology of emotions explores how speakers conceptualise their emotions and express them verbally. Thus, it is productive to connect phraseological units (PU) to the cognitive process or motivation underlying their meaning. In this sense, highlighting the metaphorical and metonymic value of an affectively charged PU helps its identification, learning, and retention in a foreign language (FL). The present research examines three colour-emotion PU in Spanish (i.e. ponerse rojo, ponerse blanco, ponerse negro). Specifically, it focuses on exploring the colour-emotion change property and how it is expressed in language. Through a methodology based on corpus analysis (Spanish Web Corpus (2018) / esTenTen18) and cognitive analysis, it aims to illustrate the underlying metaphors and metonymies. The results, in line with previous studies, showed the presence of metaphors and metonymies in the phrasing of emotions (e.g. anger/shame is a hot fluid in a container, part for part, effect for cause, or part for all). A quantitative analysis of the target PU in the esTenTen18 corpus provided data on frequency, context, and the emotions that are referred to. Hence, the PU ponerse rojo (n=10,403) was positioned as the most common and was used to express embarrassment and anger, followed by ponerse negro (n=3,927), which represented the emotion of anger as well. The latter was closely followed by ponerse blanco (n=3,044) to denote fear. The findings allow us to reflect on the pedagogical implications of colour-emotion PU and to put forward recommendations that enhance metaphorical and metonymic awareness in the Spanish/FL classroom. Future research foresees the realisation of material based on the findings and suggestions and subsequent implementation in the classroom.