The Language Of Colour

Moving on from the meanings of single colours, Theo van Leeuwen develops the theory that many different features shape the way we attach meaning to the colours we see in front of us, and the idea that colour schemes are more important than individual colours. The Language of Colour is the ideal textbook for students of Multimodality and Language and Communication within Applied Linguistics, communication studies, art and design and cultural studies.

With more tha 4,000 enteries, this dictionary is the first of its kind: a treasury of color words and phrases, a comprehensive resource for exploring every aspect of color.

This book presents a major leap forward in the understanding of colour by showing how richer descriptions of colour samples can be operationalized in agent-based models. Four different language strategies are explored: the basic colour strategy, the graded membership strategy, the category combination strategy and the basic modification strategy. These strategies are firmly rooted in empirical observations in natural languages, with a focus on compositionality at both the syntactic and semantic level. Through a series of in-depth experiments, this book discerns the impact of the environment, language and embodiment on the formation of basic colour systems. Finally, the experiments demonstrate how language users can invent their own language strategies of increasing complexity by combining primitive cognitive operators, and how these strategies can be aligned between language users through linguistic interactions.

This volume presents authoritative and up-to-date research in colour studies by specialists across a wide range of academic disciplines, including vision science, psychology, psycholinguistics, linguistics, anthropology, onomastics, philosophy, archaeology and design. The chapters have been developed from papers and posters presented at the Progress in Colour Studies (PICS2016) conference held at University College London in September 2016. The book continues the series from the earlier PICS conferences, which have become renowned for their insights into colour in language and cognition. In the present book all chapters have been rigorously peer-reviewed and revised to ensure the highest standards throughout. The chapters are grouped into three sections: Colour Perception and Cognition; The Language of Colour; and The Diversity of Colour. Each section is preceded by a short introduction drawing together the themes of its chapters. There are over 120 colour illustrations.

Generalisations about language and culture are at best amusing and meaningless, but is there anything sensible left to be said about the relation between language, culture and thought? *Does language reflect the culture of a society? *I

Colour permeates contemporary visual and material culture and affects our senses beyond the superficial encounter by infiltrating our perceptions and memories and becoming deeply rooted in thought processes that categorise and divide along culturally constructed lines. Colour exists as a cultural as well as psycho-physical phenomenon and acquires a multitude of meanings within differing historical and cultural contexts. The contributors examine how colour becomes imbued with specific symbolic and material meanings that tint our constructions of race, gender, ideal bodies, the relationship of the self to others and of the self to technology and the built environment. By highlighting the relationship of colour across media and material culture, this volume reveals the complex interplay of cultural connotations, discursive practices and socio-psychological dynamics of colour in an international context.

In this beautiful and thorough investigation, The Secret Language of Color celebrates and illuminates the countless ways in which color colors our world. Why is the sky blue, the grass green, a rose red? Most of us have no idea how to answer these questions, nor are we aware that color pervades nearly all aspects of life, from the subatomic realm and the natural world to human culture and psychology. Organized into chapters that begin with a fascinating explanation of the physics and chemistry of color, The Secret Language of Color travels from outer space to Earth, from plants to animals to humans. In these chapters we learn about how and why we see color, the nature of rainbows, animals with color vision far superior and far inferior to our own, how our language influences the colors we see, and much more. Between these chapters, authors Joann Eckstut and Ariele Eckstut turn their attention to the individual hues of the visible spectrum?red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet?presenting each in fascinating, in-depth detail. Including hundreds of stunning photographs and dozens of informative, often entertaining graphics, every page is a breathtaking demonstration of color and its role in the world around us. Whether you see red, are a shrinking violet, or talk a blue streak, this is the perfect book for anyone interested in the history, science, culture, and beatuty of color in the natural and man-made world.