Seeing the World in Technicolor: Color Lexicon and the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

As previously discussed on this blog there is a concept, known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, that promotes the idea that language effects and thereby limits our perception of the world.  This idea was conceived by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf in 1929, although it did not become popular in either anthropology or linguistics until the 1950s.  This overlapped with dominant scholarly values within anthropology wherein scholars sought to understand how different people classified the world around them. 

 

From this came two important studies concerning color lexicons (vocabulary) and perception.  The first was a study completed in the 1950s by Lenneberg and Roberts.  In their study they took over 300 Munsell color swatches, which are considered the standard for color labeling within science, engineering, art among Western cultural groups, and put them on a larger board.  Lenneberg and Roberts then covered the swatches with plastic and asked participants who spoke either Zuni or English to identify all the colors of one specific color category (e.g., all green, all blue, all red, etc.).  Lenneberg and Roberts found variation in some of the color identifications among English speakers, and they found consistency among color identifications among the Zuni speakers.  Their results were used to support the notion of linguistic relativity, which claims that languages affect and in essence limit how one perceives the world around them.  Ultimately, it could be concluded that the Zuni speakers could not perceive of the color differences as finely as the English speakers.

 

This study was, however, replicated and expanded upon by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay over a decade later.  In their study they incorporated a larger pool of participants, drawing from over 100 different language speakers.  They achieved similar results as Lenneberg and Roberts but came to completely different conclusions.  It was not that people could not conceive or perceive differences in color.  They just had different ways of describing colors based on the limits of their vocabulary.  This did not make any group inferior or superior to another.  It just meant that there were differences in describing the colors. 

 

More recently a study conducted among the Tsimane’ people of the lowlands of Bolivia supported these conclusions.  The researchers found that those who were bilingual (who spoke their native language and Bolivian Spanish) were able to use their native language to positively identify differences in colors.  Their native language does have two terms that are typically used interchangeably to describe green and blue, but among the bilingual Tsimane’ speakers they effectively differentiated between green and blue as Bolivian Spanish speakers did.  Ultimately, they learned what the Bolivian Spanish speakers believed about colors and incorporated it into their descriptions of the colors to meet those other speaker’s needs.  Ultimately, it was not that the Tsimane’ could not perceive color differences.  They did not see a need to do so, whereas when that need came up as a result of interactions with a culturally different group they used their language to meet those speakers’ needs.

 

Berlin and Kay ultimately reached various other conclusions.  They discovered that there are only ten to 12 basic color terms across all languages, although those terms may and often do vary.  Groups that are more isolated from others tend to have fewer color terms, but there are often ways of differentiating among variations of colors.  Berlin and Kay also realized that color lexicon is dependent on cultural experience (e.g., forest green is an acceptable way of describing green if cultural groups know what a forest is versus denim blue, which may not translate well for group who do not know what denim is).  This led them to argue that the terms used for defining color needed to be generalized and recognizable across all cultural groups, removing compound color terms (e.g., blue-green).  Variations of color should also not be considered part of the basic color terms (e.g., light yellow or fire engine red).

 

Works Cited

Nield, David. "How a Remote Amazonian Culture Saw 'Blue' And 'Green' in a Whole New Light." Science Alert 12 November 2023. Electronic.

Stanlaw, James. "Colors and Culture: Language, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, and the Americanist Tradition in Anthropology, Linguistics, and Cognitive Science." n.d. Illinois State University. Electronic. 14 May 2024.

Welsch, Robert L., Luis A. Vivanco and Agustin Fuentes. Anthropology: Asking Questions About Human Origins, Diversity, and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Print.