Language Colors Our World: A Summary of the Use of Color in the Study of Linguistic Relativity

Résumé

Linguistic relatiity, a complex and hotly debated topic in the linguistics community, has been controversial
since it was spotli ghted by Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1930s. Color is often used as a tool to prove or disprove
linguistic deteminism; this paper discusses the history of color in the Whorfian hypothesis and in linguistic
relativity as a whole and presents and analyzes the findings of particularly important studies, including those by
pioneering linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf, Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, and Paul Brown and Eric Lennenberg.
Finally, this infom1ation will be synthesized to detemine to what extent language affects color perception, in the
author's opinion.