Language, culture, and colour categorization

Do the ways that we talk about colour play a role in the ways that we can think about colour? If two languages have different colour words, does that mean that speakers of those languages think about colour in different ways? Are some colour words or colour concepts more significant, more ‘basic’ than others? And if so why and in what way does that matter, if at all? These questions, and there are further related ones, are the basis for an extended research tradition more than 50 years old. In this chapter, I aim to describe the parts of this research tradition relevant to understanding the ways that colour language might be thought to influence colour cognition. It is, however, impossible to address this general question without acknowledging the size and scope of the relevant research. It ranges from ethnography and descriptive linguistics to cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Virtually every element of this research tradition is contested (see, e.g., Saunders and van Brakel 1997 ). The seemingly innocuous questions with which this chapter begins have been the ground for high controversy: “The battlefield of colour” ( Regier et al. 2010 ). In this chapter, I will address those parts and aspects of the tradition as well as those elements of the controversy that are relevant to understanding colour language, specifically, in relation to thought and culture.