A CROSS-CULTURAL-STUDY OF COLOR GROUPING - EVIDENCE FOR WEAK LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY

We report a cross-cultural study of colour grouping carried out as a t est of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic relativity theory). Spea kers of English, Russian and Setswana-languages that differ in their n umber of basic colour terms, and in how the blue-green region is categ orized-were compared on a colour sorting task. Informants sorted a rep resentative set of 65 colours into groups so that members of the group s looked similar to each other, with no restriction on the number of g roups formed. If linguistic relativity theory is true, then there shou ld be reliable differences between the three samples in the compositio n of the groups they formed associated with the differing positions of colour category boundaries in the languages. The most striking featur e of the results, inconsistent with linguistic relativity theory, was the similarity amongst the patterns of choice of the three samples. Ho wever, there were also significant differences amongst the samples. Se tswana speakers (who have a single basic term fcr BLUE or GREEN) were more likely to group BLUE colours with GREEN colours than either Engli sh or Russian speakers. Bur Russian speakers (who have two basic colou r terms for BLUE) were no more likely than English speakers to group l ight and dark BLUE separately. In addition there were general structur al differences in grouping among the samples: they differed in the lev el of consensus in grouping, the number of groups formed and in the di stribution of the number of colours placed in a group. these structura l differences may reflect differences in the availability and salience of the colour categories across the languages. Our data support perce ptual universalism modulated by weaker linguistic effects.