Color and culture: Innovations and insights since Basic Color Terms—Their Universality and Evolution (1969). Issue 6 (30th September 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Jameson, Kimberly A.; Webster, Michael A.
• Is Part Of: Color research & application. Volume 44:Issue 6(2019:Dec.)
• Page Start: 1034
• Page End: 1041
• Publication Date: 2019-09-30
• Subjects: basic color terms -- color category evolution -- cross‐cultural color perception; Color -- Periodicals; 535
• DOI: 10.1002/col.22438
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0361-2317

Abstract

Abstract: Fifty years ago, in 1969, Berlin & Kay published Basic Color Terms—Their Universality and Evolution and set in‐motion a large‐scale systematic research program for studying color naming and categorization across first‐language speakers from different ethno‐linguistic societies. While it is difficult to gauge the impact a research program can make over 50‐years, many linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, and perceptual psychologists consider the Berlin & Kay book as one of the top‐most influential works in cross‐cultural studies not only of color linguistics, but of cognition and language more generally. Today reverberations from the Berlin & Kay (1969) research program continue to resonate through recently available data sets that are being examined with new quantitative analysis methods and modeling approaches. Here we review the origins of the Basic Color Terms phenomenon, and note a few of the numerous directions from which on‐going related work continues to bring forth interesting results in the color categorization arena.