INTRODUCING COLOUR VOCABULARY IN THE FRAMEWORK OF TEACHING SPANISH AS A MULTICULTURAL LANGUAGE: ILLUSTRATIVE METHOD TO OVERCOME COMMUNICATION DIFFICULTIES

Abstract

. The issue of reflecting culturally-bound semantics in language units of different levels has lately been topical in a large number of investigations all over the world. We assume that one of crucially important subjects in this field is additional semantics of colour names in Latin American variations of the Spanish language. Studies on history of Latin American countries and etymology of language units concerning colours in Spanish make us come to a conclusion that the appearance of additional culturally-bound meanings in the “colour” semantic field in different Spanish-speaking countries is mostly connected with extralinguistic factors, such as ethnohistory, political history, geography and climate, cultural traditions. The semantic field (or even macrofield) of colours represents a source of language-and-culture-bound communicative difficulties for those who study Spanish. In this sense, they include lacunary meanings of colours in Latin American variations of Spanish denoting gaps in the conceptual picture of the world and can be evident or hidden. The latter as a rule concern colour symbolism and associations in different countries and play a great role in the intercultural communication. As a result, we suggest that such vocabulary should be taught to the audience studying Spanish, especially to would-be translators and interpreters, to avoide misunderstanding and communicative failures and to get a better perception of Latin American cultures. In this context we consider the following methods efficient: