Colour Terms in New Zealand Prison Jargon: A Semantic Aspect

Abstract

The research aims to identify semantic (semasiological and onomasiological) properties of substandard nomination of colour items in New Zealand prison jargon. It is noted that colour terms are differentiated into analogues (lexico-semantic variants of literary lexemes) and univerbs (autonomous nominative units) in the semasiological aspect; the concepts connected with drug use and denoting a person’s racial, ethnic and subcultural background act as synonymic attraction centres. It is emphasised that the excessive variation in the sociolect leading to expressivity and caused by the presence of colour terms as well is considered to be its distinctive feature. The work is novel in that it is the first to describe the semantic properties of New Zealand penitentiary sociolectisms functioning as colour terms, which have been little studied in Russian Anglistics, in the context of sociolexicography. The results obtained during the sociolexicographic analysis have shown that (1) semasiological characteristics peculiar to the elements under study are manifested in the nature of their semantic relation with literary equivalents and in the expansion through them of synonymic rows of the sociolect, (2) onomasiological particular qualities of colour lexemes are realised by means of such mechanisms of semantic derivation as metaphorisation and metonymisation.

References

1. Беляева Т. М., Хомяков В. А. Нестандартная лексика английского языка. М.: ЛИБРОКОМ, 2010.
2. Коровушкин В. П. Английский лексический субстандарт versus русское лексическое просторечие (опыт контрастивно-социолектологического анализа). Череповец, 2008.
3. Коровушкин В. П. Основы контрастивной социолектологии: дисс. … д. филол. н. Пятигорск, 2005.
4. Коровушкин В. П. Теоретические основы контрастивной социолектологии. Череповец, 2009.
5. Москвин В. П. Русская метафора: очерк семиотической теории. М.: ЛЕНАНД, 2006.
6. Скляревская Г. Н. Метафора в системе языка. СПб.: Наука, 1993.
7. Трифанова С. С. Новозеландский тюремный жаргон в функциональном аспекте // Филологические науки. Вопросы теории и практики. 2019. Т. 12. Вып. 11. URL: https://www.gramota.net/articles/issn_1997-2911_2019_11_68.pdf
8. Хомяков В. А. Нестандартная лексика в структуре английского языка национального периода: автореф. дисс. … д. филол. н. Л., 1980.
9. Чиршева Г. Н. Сопоставительный анализ метонимических переносов в языке художественной прозы и публицистики (на материале современного английского языка): автореф. дисс. … к. филол. н. Л., 1986.
10. Looser D. Boobslang: A Lexicographical Study of the Argot of New Zealand Prison Inmates, in the Period 1996-2000: A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English: in 2 vols. Christchurch: University of Canterbury, 2001. Vol. 1.

Author information

About this article

Publication history

• Received: October 15, 2022.
• Published: November 30, 2022.

Keywords

• новозеландский национальный вариант английского языка
• социальная дифференциация языка
• новозеландский тюремный жаргон
• тюремная субкультура
• цветовая номинация
• New Zealand English
• social variation of the language
• New Zealand prison jargon
• prison subculture
• nomination of colours

Copyright

© 2022 The Author(s)
© 2022 Gramota Publishing, LLC

User license

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)