Experimental Data On English And French Colour Associations And Some Gender Differences In Their Perception

Resumen

A psycholinguistic experiment carried out in this study allowed us to study the question of colour naming in the English and French languages from the native speakers”™ points of view. The results show that the colour perception in both languages has quite a big number of similar characteristics, even though some colour names show some national and cultural specifity. The exceptions are some co-meanings.

The main conclusion which can be done on the basis of the study is the impact of society, life conditions and national character.

In this study we were also interested by the question of the difference in colour perception from the position of gender.

Basing on the analysis of gender differences we can notice that the female associative series is much wider than that of the male one. Speaking of positivity of perception and associations we have to notice that women”™s answers are more positive than men”™s. However, the male respondents”™ associations can be characterized as neutral rather than negative. The study confirms the existence of the difference in colour perception from the position of gender differences, which can be explained by differences in the social roles of men and women in the cultures of the examined languages.