Color
Much research on semantics is based on the assumption that concepts are somehow “hardwired” to our mind or brain, for example, in our so-called “mental lexicon”. This is perhaps most clearly seen in research on color concepts.
The book Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution (Berlin & Kay, 1969) has had a big impact on the view of color terms. In that book the authors claimed the universality and evolutionary development of eleven Basic Color Terms (BCTs): The following characteristics of this universalist view is written by one of the main critics of that view, Barbara Saunders (2000): “[T]he relation between Munsell, the workings of the visual system, and the colour naming behaviour of people, is so tight it can be taken to be a causative law. Diversity of colour-naming behavior is defined as a system-regulated stability evinced by Evolution. The full lexicalisation of the human colour space is designated Evolutionary Stage Seven, as in American English; languages below this level are the fossil record”.
Berlin & Kay's (1969) view of color concepts is contrasted with a cultural-relative view in which our color concepts (and semantics in general) are not supposed to be determined primarily by our visual system, but by our relative needs to act in relation to the colored environment. “Sociohistorical psychology emphasizes the fact that sensory information is selected, interpreted, and organized by a social consciousness. Perception is thus not reducible to, or explainable by, sensory mechanisms, per se. Sapir, Whorf, Vygotsky, and Luria all maintained that sensory processes are subordinated to and subsumed within "higher" social psychological functions. “ (Ratner, 1989) . Regarding relativism in color concepts see in addition to Ratner, 1989 also Goodwin, 2000, Lucy, 1998, Roberson, Davies & Davidoff, 2000 and Saunders, 2000.
We may thus conclude that the universality of color terms is controversial. The dominant view is cognitivist and maintain the universality of concepts, while a well-argued minority maintain a relativist view of color concepts. This last view is related to the pragmatic view.
van Brakel & Saunders (2001): "According to the dominant view in cognitive science, in particular in its more popularized versions, color sensings or perceptions are located in a 'quality space'. This space has three dimensions: hue (the chromatic aspect of color), saturation (the 'intensity' of hue), and brightness. This space is structured further via a small number of primitive hues or landmark colors, usually four (red, yellow, green, blue) or six (if white and black are included). It has also been suggested that there are eleven semantic universals - the six colors previously mentioned plus orange, pink, brown, purple, and grey. Scientific evidence for these widely accepted theories is at best minimal, based on sloppy methodology and at worst non-existent. Against the standard view, it is argued that color might better be regarded as the outcome of a social-historical developmental trajectory in which there is mutual shaping of philosophical presuppositions, scientific theories, experimental practices, technological tools, industrial products, rhetorical frameworks, and their intercalated and recursive interactions with the practices of daily life. That is: color, the domain of color, is the outcome of interactive processes of scientific, instrumental, industrial, and everyday lifeworlds. That is: color might better be called an exosomatic organ, a second nature. "
Literature:
Berlin, B. & Kay, P. (1969). Basic Color Terms. Their Universality and Evolution, Berkeley: University of California Press. (Reprinted 1991).
Goodwin, C. (2000). Practices of Color Classification. Mind, Culture and Activity, 7(1-2), 19-36.
Ratner, C. (1989). A Sociohistorical Critique of Naturalistic Theories of Color Perception. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 10, 361-372. http://web.archive.org/web/20031029152929/http://www.humboldt1.com/~cr2/colors.htm
Roberson, D., Davies, I. & Davidoff, J. (2000) Color categories are not universal: Replications and new evidence from a stone-age culture. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129, 369-398.
Saunders, B. (2000) Revisiting `Basic Color Terms.' Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society, 6, 81-99.
van Brakel, J. & Saunders, B. (2001). Color: an exosomatic organ? Proc. SPIE Vol. 4663, p. 162-176, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001SPIE.4663..162V
Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia. Munsell color system. Retrieved 2009-02-19 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munsell
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 19-02-2009