THE PHANTOM OBJECTIVITY OF COLOUR: WITH REFERENCE TO THE WORKS OF FRANZ BOAS ON THE KWAKIUTL

Approaches to Translation Studies

Volumn 14, Issue , 1997, Pages 87-95

  Saunders, B ^a   van Brakel, J ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 85182705118     PISSN: 01690523     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book Series    
DOI: 10.1163/9789004485884_009     Document Type: Chapter

References (8)

1. Although references can be found to "precommercial paints" (Saunders 1992), "colour" is presupposed as a pre-existing universal. However, apart from well developed practices for producing dyes and pigments, there is no firm pre-contact evidence of abstract hue words used to relate otherwise disparate phenomena and events. If, however, "concepts" are understood as cultural tools, then the precontact Kwakiutl had dye- and pigment-concepts. This of course opens a large gap between practice and lexicalisation.
2. We argue neither that the Kwakiutl had no colour categories, nor that they had those typical of "primitive peoples" in the Berlin and Kay sense (that is, myriads of concretised chromatic designations and "secondary" colour words with few superordinate, abstract categories). The capacity to make chromatic distinctions is as much part of the human physiognomy as are thumbs and propriocentric orientation. Our concern is with characterising Berlin and Kay's world growth story as a Eurocentric narrative, which filters everything through the West and its values and exemplifies a universal process of modernisation.
3. See Cannizzo 1983; the point came up repeatedly amongst different groups of Kwakiutl (at Fort Rupert, Alert Bay and Cape Mudge) during fieldwork of 1989-90 and 1995 (Saunders: unpublished data). At Fort Rupert it is said that the chiefs called a meeting to decide what to do about Hunt as he was always hanging around. They decided that it was better to include him in the potlatching rather than let him cause trouble.
4. Boas (1891) gives k'uyuk'oe'it for Shuswap 'light blue', 'light green' and koa'lt for 'yellow'.
5. MacLaury (1987), however, claims that kwaalt is the 'yellow and/or green' term.
6. Berlin and Kay's (1969) cavalier dismissal of Boas and Whorf as "extreme linguistic relativists" is therefore ironically misguided.
7. This is especially remarkable as Boas (1911) was emphatic that the "natural unit of expression was the sentence" and that the concept of a "word" was entirely artificial, evident only as the outcome of analysis (Stocking 1974b).
8. Similarly "face-paint", flora and fauna terms do not contain any of Boas and Hunt's (1975) colour morphemes: cf. Saunders 1992.