Color terms of feelings and emotions in the Russian language consciousness

Abstract
The paper is concerned with color designation of feelings and emotions in Russian. According to the National Russian Corpus the color gamma of emotional states used by native speakers is limited to a few basic colors and hues, including white, red, pink, green, blue, black and gray. In the Russian language consciousness, the same color term can convey different feelings, while nuances of the same emotional state may be rendered by different hues and colors. So, it appears that white is a favorite color term for describing fright, fear, horror and shame; red for resentment, anger and pleasure; pink for pleasure, confusion and happiness; white for shame, resentment, anger and rage; black for resentment, anger and rabies; blue for offense, horror and fun; green for fright, anger and happiness; gray for fright and dread. The choice of color terms is determined by an inner belief that a certain emotional state is best expressed by this particular color, that the best sample to illustrate the yellow is by such particular things as a lemon, or saffron; the red by crayfish, poppy, or peony; the white by chalk, paper, or canvas.

Keywords: corpus studies, linguistic view of the world, colour terms, feelings and emotions, empirical experience, sample, opinion, truth-value