У статті на матеріалі текстів розважально-інформаційних інтернет-видань для жінок (так
званого жіночого глянцю) здійснено аналіз якісного складу лексико-семантичної групи назв кольорів,
схарактеризовано компонентний склад мікросистем назв основних кольорів, описано шляхи їх
поповнення. Простежено вплив розгляданих лексичних засобів на формування в читачів мовних та
культурних стереотипів.
Background. Because of their anthropocentricity, color names belong to language universals and
are the part of active lexicon. The purpose of this article is to characterize the actual qualities of the
lexical-semantic group of color names, sources, and ways of their replenishment with the help of
structural, descriptive, and comparative research methods on the material of online resources
entertaining and informational texts for women. The language of the media seems to be a sign of
progressiveness and intellectualism; hence, speakers eagerly follow it, satisfying their communicative
and cognitive demands.
The main results of this study are as follows:
1) the structure of a slick magazine for women involves an increasing reduction in size of the verbal
component of the message; however, its information weight, on the contrary, increases;
2) the name of color is intended to perform not the primary ‒ reference ‒function, but becomes a means
of manipulation, forming a demand for the desirable reality of the audience. The critical manifestation of
this tendency is the appearance of color names correlated with non-ens;
3) analysis of the frequency of color names usage shows that tokens on the designation of “pure” colors
belong to the rarely used ones. The quantitative composition of the microsystem of the main colors and
means for indicating the intensity of the expression of color is completely correlated with public tastes and preferences: the more important and widespread the realia is, the greater the number of tokens are used on
its designation;
4) we can state the significant replenishment of the corpus of the names of colors due to: a) development
of the new meanings of polysemic words (there is a figurative component of the meaning resulting from
the metaphorical transfer that forms the content of the new concept) and b) lexical borrowings from other
languages, most often by transliterating or modeling words and constructions after foreign patterns.
Therefore, the composition of the origin of the analyzed lexical-semantic group is rather diverse: there
are both long-established nominations (though they are in minority) and lexemes-neologisms, the
appearance of which is not caused by internal-language factors but subordinated to the commercial nature
of these media.
Discussion. The studying of a short-period dynamics of the only one lexical-semantic group suggests
wider conclusions and generalizations, which go far beyond the borders of lexicology. In particular, today
the Ukrainian-language segment of Internet resources for women is largely unoriginal in nature, duplicating
Russian or English editions. The often-used method of automatic translation of the text without proper
editing gradually distorts the linguistic image of this sphere and provokes the deformation of the readers’
linguistic image of the world at different levels ‒ from the erosion of spelling norms to the destruction of
grammar rules. The bad quality of the language of such texts cannot be justified by their “lack of seriousness”
or entertaining character, because the media of any genre, and especially targeted at the mass consumer, not
only enrich his/her language world but also easily form the stereotypes that determine the continuity in the
minds of the whole society cultural and linguistic traditions.
