Linguistic relativity and the color naming debate
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The concept of linguistic relativity concerns the relationship between language and thought, specifically whether language influences thought, and, if so, how. This question has led to research in multiple disciplines—including anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and philosophy. Among the most debated theories in this area of work is the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. This theory states that the language a person speaks will affect the way that this person thinks.[1] The theory varies between two main proposals: that language structure determines how individuals perceive the world and that language structure influences the world view of speakers of a given language but does not determine it.[2]
There are two formal sides to the color debate, the universalist and the relativist. The universalist side claims that the biology of all human beings is all the same, so the development of color terminology has absolute universal constraints. The relativist side asserts that the variability of color terms cross-linguistically points to more culture-specific phenomena. Because color exhibits both biological and linguistic aspects, it has become a focus of the study of the relationship between language and thought.[3] In a 2006 review of the debate Paul Kay and Terry Regier concluded that "There are universal constraints on color naming, but at the same time, differences in color naming across languages cause differences in color cognition and/or perception."[4]
The color debate was made popular in large part due to Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's 1969 study and their subsequent publishing of Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution.[5] Although much on color terminology has been done since Berlin and Kay's study, other research predates it, including the mid-nineteenth century work of William Ewart Gladstone and Lazarus Geiger, which also predates the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, as well as the work of Eric Lenneberg and Roger Brown in 1950s and 1960s.