Colour metaphors and metonymies in business English domain: a corpus-based analysis

Domain-Specific English (DSE) is characterized by a wide use of figurative language; very frequently new terms and expressions are created by deriving new meanings from general language through the process of metaphorisation (Gotti, 2008). In particular, in the study of English for Business, we often realize that new figurative meanings are added to the literal meaning of already-existing words through the application of figurative speech notions such as metaphors and metonymies (e.g., metaphors like ‘parent company’ or ‘sister company’ and metonymies like ‘pipeline company’ or ‘board of directors’). The use of colour metaphors and metonymies in business domains can be regarded as a way of giving dynamism and vividness to technical texts; the choice in favour of colour expressions instead of their literal form (‘red tape’ instead of ‘bureaucracy’, ‘green light’ instead of ‘permission’) can add connotative meanings to the text (Philip, 2006) that are worth inquiring into. After having examined two corpora made up of articles coming from The Economist and the Financial Times, this paper aims at focusing on colour metaphors and metonymies found in these texts and at carrying out both a quantitative and a qualitative analysis. We will highlight the frequency of each colour expression studied on the one hand, and the various colour connotations on the other. Finally, we will reflect on the possible translations into Italian of these English colour expressions and on whether the metaphoric or metonymic meaning is recognized in their Italian equivalents.[...]