Colorative Markers of Modernity in Contemporary Cultural Conflicts

This study investigates coloratives (color nominations) as markers of modernity and indicators of current cultural, social, and political conflicts. It explores how color vocabulary contributes to the formation of public discourse, reflecting key trends and contradictions of the 21st century. Approximately 80 significant colorative units from the “Word of the Year” rankings between 2014 and 2024 are analyzed. The sources include official “Word of the Year” lists from the Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache, FundéuRAE, and Instituto Cervantes. The materials for analysis are drawn from public corpora, news archives, social media, and analytical reviews accompanying annual linguistic rankings. Contexts in English, German, and Spanish are examined. The nominations Black Lives Matter, Greenwashing, White Supremacy, and White Parties are interpreted. The study raises the issue of how coloratives are increasingly employed to construct ideological positions and mobilize audiences. It demonstrates that the dynamics of color semantics directly correlate with socio-political shifts: for instance, the rising use of coloratives denoting ‘black’ is linked to the global anti-racist movement, while ‘green’ is associated with the environmental agenda and its commercialization. The novelty of this research lies in its systematic cross-linguistic reconstruction of the evolution of coloratives as markers of modernity based on authoritative linguistic rankings.

colorative, cultural conflict, color nominations, Word of the Year rankings, political vocabulary