When Red Is - and Is Not - Blood: A Corpus-Assisted Cognitive-Semantic Analysis of Five Settler Australian Texts (1874-1907)
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: This study investigates when the colour term RED is conceptually connected with BLOOD and when the two domains remain independent in settler Australian literary discourse. The data comprise five complete public-domain texts published between 1874 and 1907 by Marcus Clarke, Henry Lawson, Miles Franklin, Joseph Furphy, and Jeannie Gunn. The study adopts a corpus-assisted qualitative design combining full-text lexical retrieval, paragraph-level concordance reading, cognitive-semantic annotation, and counterexample analysis. A verified analytical set of 30 concordance contexts was assembled across the five texts to test explicit BLOOD-RED bridges against competing RED and BLOOD pathways; the set is deliberately criterion-based and is not treated as a frequency sample. Three direct bridge types are attested: blood-red compounding, blood as a colour comparator, and bodily circulation as a causal basis for visible redness. The same texts also provide systematic counterevidence to any general RED IS BLOOD equation. RED occurs independently in landscape, fire, flora, atmospheric description, and conventional idioms, while BLOOD extends independently to violence, personhood, descent, temperament, inheritance, vitality, and exploitation. The findings support an asymmetrical partial-overlap model: BLOOD can motivate RED, but RED does not entail BLOOD, and many figurative BLOOD constructions have no chromatic component. The analysis further shows that red soil, red gum, and comparable Australian landscape expressions cannot be classified as blood imagery without local lexical or causal co-activation. Methodologically, the study demonstrates the value of separating lexical semantics, metonymic motivation, metaphorical extension, and literary symbolism before cross-linguistic comparison.
Source: SocArXiv (OSF Preprints)
Author: Nguyen Huynh Si Tan
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7214979082