Colour Words

Colour words mockup

Significance

For example, cultures associate colours with universal symbols and concepts. 'Red' has different meanings for someone who experienced the Chinese Cultural Revolution than a white Australian, even though both may associate red with blood.

Human language privileges human perception
Nonhumans perceive colours differently from humans
- Many species perceive colours that humans cannot
- Nonhumans respond to colours in ways foreign to humans, e.g., instinctively, culturally, habitually
Human language fails to capture these differences
Semantic representations of human and nonhuman subjectivities are limited or non-existent

Thesauri and lexicons provide semantic meaning for words
Semantic networks relate words and concepts
Places depend on context, e.g., a 'castle' is both a dwelling and defensive structure, occupied by the upper caste of stratified cultures
Linking semantic data with text analysis reveals other subjectivities, e.g. how an 18^th century Middle Eastern person views a 'castle'
A model for 'place' using semantic data could incorporate nonhuman ontologies
- Nonhuman lexicons and ontologies are limited, but topic modelling and unsupervised generative ontologies could generate them.

What can we learn from analysis of colour words in *Gormenghast*?
What can colour words tell us about literary places?
Can semantic metadata (e.g., thesauri, lexicons) reveal trends and biases in colour language?
Does human language foreground certain colours?
- Do these biases reflect conclusions from external sources, e.g., history, anthropology, ethnography?
Can this analysis inform generalisations about a work's context, e.g., place of origin, cultural setting, or time period?
How can these results support representations of complex, layered places?
- Could a semantic network of colour associations (cultural, behavioural, physiological, neurological) inform such representations?

Represent colour words in *Gormenghast* visually
Demonstrate the richness of basic colour words
- Locate words in the Historical Thesaurus
- Show colour words in other ontologies (WordNet, ConceptNet)
- Cross-reference with sources about colour language development