Color categories appear to be among the most biologically

determined domains to which humans apply language. Perhaps it 

is because of this stubborn, physiological reality that people 

who wish to emphasize cultural relativity struggle so mightily 

in their arguments for arbitrariness in color names.

A more promising, if less black and white (pun), line of 

reasoning is to array domains on a continuum of degree of 

cultural relativity.

In a paper in Cognition (1977, pp. 215-233), with Miyake and 

Muto, we studied the culture-boundedness of referential 

messages by Japanese and American students describing abstract 

figures by translating the descriptions between languages and 

having students in the opposite culture try to understand 

which figure (out of 16) was being described. Although many 

messages translated well between cultures, others were highly 

culture bound, showing the effects of culture (as well as the 

more universal aspects of perception and language).

It would be interesting to replicate the study with 16 hard to 

describe colors, perhaps.

PS: I came in on this discussion because I read that Dr. 

Hardcastle was presenting on a PBS satellite conference on 

Using the Web to Enhance the Classroom and visited her site, 

saw her on WebCam, called her, and received almost immediately 

a copy of a paper she wrote, which was useful in my research 

on how to study learning in Web-based courses. Thanks for the 

chance to drop in on your class. Patrick Dickson, Professor, 

Director, Technology Exploration Center, Michigan State 

University. pdickson@pilot.msu.edu