Language about Colour

Colour words describe ambiguous sub-sets of the colour spectrum
Words refer to indeterminate ranges of colour spectrum
- See Colour Words experiment
Colour terms emerge over time
- Charting the spread of colour words using the Historical Thesaurus.3
Development of secondary colour terms in English.4
Distribution of words for colours varies across human groups
Colour words have some universal associations.1
Some languages lack any colour terms
- [T]he article presents a detailed study of the visual world reflected in the Australian language Warlpiri and in Warlpiri ways of speaking, showing that while Warlpiri people have no ‘colour-talk’ (and no colour-practices’), they have a rich visual discourse of other kinds, linked with their own cultural practices.6
Group factors influence distribution of words across visible spectrum
- Human perception limited to subset of electromagnetic spectrum
  - Bees perceive infrared light
- Environment
  - Distribution of colours in agent environment
- Social, cultural, and economic factors
  - Trade, beauty, sexual preference, class stratification, racial segregation
Human language struggles to capture other experiences of colour
- Humans communicate using language
  - Implications for science, justice, design
- See Bias in Language experiment

Footnotes

Marc Alexander and Christian Kay, “The Spread of RED in the Historical Thesaurus of English,” in Colour Studies, ed. Wendy Anderson et al. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2014), 126–39, https://doi.org/10/dvk3.˄
Casson, Ronald W. “Russett, Rose, and Raspberry: The Development of English Secondary Color Terms.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 4, no. 1 (1994): 5–22. https://doi.org/10/c8tmdh.˄
Biggam, Carole P. “Prehistoric Colour Semantics: A Contradiction in Terms.” In Colour Studies: A Broad Spectrum, edited by Wendy Anderson, Carole P. Biggam, Carole Hough, and Christian Kay, 3–28. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2014.˄
Wierzbicka, Anna. “Why There Are No ‘Colour Universals’ in Language and Thought.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14, no. 2 (2008): 407–25. https://doi.org/10/d894bn.˄

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