Color Categories in Thought & Lang

by C.L. Hardin

Twenty-five years ago, Berlin and Kay argued that there are commonalities of basic color term use that extend across languages and cultures, and probably express universal features of perception and cognition. In this volume, a distinguished team of contributors from visual science, psychology, linguistics and anthropology examine how these claims have fared in the light of current knowledge, surveying key ideas, results and techniques from the study of human color vision as well as field methods and theoretical interpretations drawn from linguistic anthropology.

Genres: Linguistics

416 pages, Paperback

First published August 14, 1997

Reviews

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an invaluable text--especially for its concluding examination of how modern Anglophone perceptions of color has formed a paradigm in the field of color studies in which the color systems of all other languages must measure up to the 'advanced' perceptions of English-language speakers. Color cannot merely be quantified in a handful of paint chips; it is in much more linguistic and intrinsic flux than such a simple and bloodless reduction as that.