A CROSS-CULTURAL-STUDY OF ENGLISH AND SETSWANA SPEAKERS ON A COLOR TRIADS TASK - A TEST OF THE SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS

We report a cross-cultural study of speakers of Setswana and of Englis h carried out as a test of the linguistic relativity hypothesis (the S apir-Whorf hypothesis). These languages differ in their number of 'bas ic' colour terms-English has eleven and Setswana has five-and in the p osition of some colour category boundaries. Speakers of the two langua ges did a 'triads' task in which they chose which of three colours was least like the other two. There were two types of triad: 'controls', for which any linguistic influences should lead to the same choices, a nd 'experimental', for which any linguistic influences should lead to different choices by the two groups. Thus the universalist position pr edicts that the choices of the two samples should be essentially the s ame for all triads, whereas the relativist position predicts that choi ce should be the same for the control triads, but differ for the exper imental triads. The most striking feature of the results was that the choices made by the two samples were very similar for both kinds of tr iads, thus supporting universalism. But, there were also small but rel iable differences associated with the linguistic differences, thus sup porting Whorfianism. Overall, it appears that there is a strong univer sal influence on colour choice but this universal influence can be mod erated by cultural influences such as language, a position consistent with 'weak Whorfianism'.