Erling Strudsholm

Black as night or as a chimney sweep? Color words and typical exemplars

Abstract Color is a key feature, crucial for recognizing and categorizing objects. Even though color appearance tends to be perceived as stable, and universal tendencies have been found, color lexicon is subject to both intercultural and intralinguistic variations. Within a general hypothesis of integrating universalistic assumptions with a relativistic view, color terms and comparative color-based expressions (e.g., white as snow) were studied. Data were collected through questionnaires and corpora; the languages studied included Italian, Danish, and English. Our data provide a picture of the variegated intertwinement between nature and culture in the investigated languages. From a universalistic perspective, natural objects (e.g., sea, sky), which appear to be more stable across time and space, are more frequently mentioned as typical exemplars than artificial ones. From a relativistic perspective, some typical exemplars, which are not common interlinguistically, are mainly related to the linguistic representation of local history and traditions of the specific nation and culture. Instead of positing a single (either universalistic or relativistic) explanatory model, different interfaces and several contextual parameters are hypothesized to work jointly with universalistic constraints in lexicalizing the chromatic experience.

Antibiotics in France and Italy: A Linguistic Analysis of Policies and Practices Compared to Danish Standards

This chapter is a comparative linguistic study that examines the annual European Antibiotic Awareness Day campaign material to prescribers and potential users in three different language societies: Denmark, France, and Italy. The study finds subtle yet distinct differences in terms of addressivity and formality: notably, the Danish campaign addresses their recipients directly and informs them informally. These observations may point to a more direct form of communication in Denmark, which could indicate a more egalitarian relationship. This relationship could be one of the reasons why Danes consume much less antibiotics and struggle much less with less antimicrobial resistance.