Revisiting Basic Color Terms

Abstract

This article revisits the classic paradigm of Berlin and Kay (1969). First, four substantial revisions indicating the current position and appeal to evolution are outlined. Second, the work is placed in its historical context of scholarly thought. Third, the attempt to operationalize the Whorfian hypothesis is shown to establish a frame against which Berlin and Kay reacted, and an experimental practice they appropriated. Their programme is disclosed as a structure in which results are self-evident, when in fact they are deduced from prior commitments. Berlin and Kay's new alliance with colour science is then examined by showing how experiments cancel the life-world, how a notion of 'unmediated presence' is methodologically exploited, how research techniques are effaced and data are 'cleaned'. Finally, it is suggested that the thesis is built on layers of mistakes which produce misrepresentations both of colour science and of intercultural relations. © Royal Anthropological Institute 2000.