Sociolectal Variation in the Length of Color Terms Used in Advertising

Abstract

In the article we explore the length of color terms used in advertising as one of the formal parameters of their lexical complexity. We report two case studies applying multiple linear regression to test the variation in the color term length relative to two sets of sociolinguistic parameters relevant for online marketing and purchase. The first case study reveals the most general variation patterns in four product categories (cars, clothing, women's makeup, house paints) involving the effects of such sociolinguistic factors as product category and the status of the brand. In the second case study, we propose a more fine-grained analysis of the product category of cars focusing on the product-specific sociolinguistic parameters (type of car, year of production, country of the parent company) and their interactions with the more general variables revealed by the first analysis.

Lexical Variation and Change

“…Following the initial formulation of the research programme in the 1990s trilogy, the dimensions were elaborated predominantly through various PhD projects. Along the semasiological dimension, methodological advances took the form of a digitized form of 'referential enrichment' in which colour information from webpages was used in a study of colour terms (Anishchanka, Speelman, and Geeraerts 2014, 2015a, 2015b, while Glynn (2014Glynn ( , 2016 explored clustering techniques on manually annotated data (more on this in Section 2.2). Along the onomasiological dimension, a descriptive focus lay on the role of loanwords in onomasiological variation (Zenner, Speelman, and Geeraerts 2012 and on the effect of concept characteristics-like vagueness, familiarity, affect-on the degree of lexical variation and its lectal distribution (Speelman and Geeraerts 2009b;Geeraerts and Speelman 2010;Franco and Geeraerts 2019;Van Hout 2019a, 2019b).…”

“…The latter is the focus of the present book, and the referential one should also be familiar: it is the approach illustrated by the Geeraerts, Grondelaers, and Bakema (1994) study of Dutch clothing terms that we referred to earlier. Other examples are Anishchanka, Speelman, and Geeraerts (2014, 2015a, 2015b, in which digitized colour information from webpages is used to explore the range and mutual relationship of colour terms. Among other things, these studies reveal that in actual usage, the term navy is not a strict hyponym of blue: the referential range of navy, defined as the set of hues to which it applies, overlaps with that of blue, but is not a strict subset of it.…”