The Colorful Palette of Goderdzi Chokheli’s Prose

Abstract

In the article, we focused on Goderdzi Chokheli's linguistic world of colors. Our study

deals with the following: the grammatical aspects of the words denoting color, types of construction; the structural units of words which the writer uses to describe the world of colors, the stylistic devices he uses to convey them. We find various signifiers for colors in the author’ works:

Simple (primary) words - black, white, green, blue, fair.  Derived – the words created by means of various affixes.  Composites: by adding the word ‘color’ to the main word. E.g. straw color, rose color, shadow color, dove color, milk color, sun color, mouse color, dog color, rabbit color, wolf color, violet (color), lead color, yellow-coated.

It is quite interesting to observe and study the lexis and phraseology reflecting the linguistic world of colors perceived by the author and then displayed to the reader. There are many figures of speech that are employed by G. Chokheli for better  perception and visualisation of this or that color and for making emotions more expressive. Among them, we have to mention simile. In similes, one of the components is the following:

Zoonyms: dove, wolf, mouse, dog, rabbit;  Names of plants (flora): rose, violet, straw; Gastronomic units: milk;  Celestial bodies: the sun. Simile is usually comprised of ‘as’, ‘like’. Besides similes, the author employs epithets, personifications, metonymy, phraseologisms.

The words denoting colors are also found in the titles of his works. And, the word tetri (meaning ‘white’) with a slight modification which is chahacteristic of a local dialect is offered as a proper name ‘Tetrua’ in the novel The Red Wolf.

In Goderdzi Chokheli’s prose, the color black and the zoonym wolf are ususally associated to negative context, while white has a predominantly positive connotation.

The linguistic world of his work is mainly conveyed through his vocabulary and phraseology, where we find dialectal expressions. Dialectic speech gives the writer the opportunity to express the psychological or spiritual mood of a protagonist. Goderdzi Chokheli managed to show his readers the linguistic world and individual style of his

color palette by using local speech and folk phraseologisms while describing the environment, and also flora and fauna surrounding his characters.