Re: NATLANG: Colours

>> Also, RED is a more salient percept than BLUE, so a
>> linguistic category for RED arises sooner than one for
>> BLUE,
>
>How is this salience determined?
Intuition based on everyday experience, and experiments
that confirm it.

Website designers know (or should know) well that if you
want to make an element "stand out", a very effective
way to achieve this is to paint or surround it with red,
because red is the colour that catches our attention the
most -> salience.

If you keep people inside a room painted all in red for
a while, their blood pressure and sudoration will start
to increase and it won't be long until they start feeling
nervous, restless or even anxious. Experiments such as
this have been carried out and prove that red is the
colour that prompts the strongest emotional reaction
in humans -> salience.

Now, why is red so salient? I dare guess that this may
have something to do with the fact that some of the most
salient things in human experience are red or reddish;
e.g., blood is red, a reddening of the human skin may
indicate fever, embarrassment, anger or physical effort,
the scene of a fire acquires a reddish tinge and when
a piece of metal gets hot, it reddens. Thus, seeing
red can indicate that there is a potential danger, that
damage has been caused or that a person is undergoing
a certain physical or emotional reaction. By contrast,
blue is the dominant colour in the background of our
natural environment on this planet: the sky all around
us is blue; thus seeing blue is usually a normal,
unsalient situation.

Cheers,
Javier

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