5. The structure of the colour space determined by multi-dimensional scaling
of perceptual data is probably the same for all human communities and it
is unrelated to the space yielded by naming data.
2.2 The Sapir-Worf Hypothesis.
The five principles of colour perception can be used to test formulations of the
Sapir-Worf hypothesis. This hypothesis is sometimes formulated Brown (1976)
[4], and Kay and Kempton (1984) [23] as three separate hypotheses
S-W.I Structural differences between languages will, in general, be paralleled
by non-linguistic cognitive differences, of an unspecified sort, in the native
speakers of the two languages.
S-W.II The structure of anyones native language strongly influences the world
view he will acquire as he learns the language.
S-W.III The semantic system of different languages vary without constraint.
2.3 Name Strategy
Kay and Kempton (1984) [23] p.75 define colour name strategy as follows:
”According to the [colour] name strategy hypothesis, the speaker
who is confronted with a difficult task of classificatory judgement
may use the LEXICAL classification of the judged ob jects as if it
were correlated with the required dimension of judgement even when
it is not, so long as the structure of the task does not block the
possibility.”
What this essentially means is that for colour judgement tasks the word for
the colour may be deployed rather than the colour itself, provided that the
nature of the task allows for this. This use of the word for a colour rather than
the colour itself is a name strategy. The significance of name strategy from a
cultural point of view is that it allows S-W.I to be tested. This can be done
by using a language community in which all eleven focal colours have not been
identified so that the language users do not have the option of deploying a name
strategy. North American native languages have one word for blue and green,
this is referred to as ”grue” - thus these speakers do not have the possibility of
deploying the words ”blue” and ”green” in judgement tasks so that they can be
used as controls. The scale of colour differences between focal blue and focal
green, for the purposes of perception is measured not by wavelength, but by a
previously ascertained difference scale. Kay and Kempton’s experiments show
that when the experiment involves the words blue and green, English speakers
consistently and measurably assume colours near the blue/green boundary to
be further toward the colour foci than they are; however when colour words
do not occur this does not happen. They conclude that a naming strategy is
involved which induces perceptual colour to move toward the colour foci.