The master’s thesis analyses French and Polish phraseology material with colour denominations as phraseological components. As one of the most recognisable features of real objects in the speaker's environment, colours are omnipresent, both in language and in the perception of one's surroundings. Based on several theories on colour denominations, the master's thesis limits the scope of the considered lexical group to basic colours and presents possible specific characteristics in this field in both languages. In the introduction, the role of culture in a language is presented on the basis of which colour names and their corresponding phrasemes developed rich symbolic meanings. Available studies suggest that colour denominations in phrasemes can occur in different ways that are usually defined in typological representations according to the difference between the connotative and denotative part of the meaning implied in colour denomination although some typologies have developed more precise criteria, e.g. based on the division of meaning into literal, metaphorical, metonymic and symbolic meaning. Such division is also used in the analysis of gathered phraseology material as the basic criterion for classifying colours as phraseological components. Emotions directly related to colour names within phrasemes are also important in the given phraseology material. In French and Polish culture, colours and emotions are often associated on both metaphorical and symbolic level. In the final part of the thesis, the issue of colours, emotions and phraseology is placed within the framework of cognitive linguistics. The master's thesis uses the prototype theory to determine prototype references of the selected basic colours, while the conceptual metaphor theory is used to ascertain if it is possible to determine conceptual metaphors on the basis of phrasemes as the realisation of the metaphor itself, and to establish if these conceptual metaphors are inscribed in broader conceptual metaphorical systems.
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