Exploring the Hidden Meanings of Color
Exploring the Hidden Meanings of Color
When you see a red light at an intersection, you instinctively know what to do. But why is that? It is just a color shown to you without much additional context. Yet, you know to stop and wait until the color changes or something else indicates that you can proceed. The reason for this is that colors hold more meaning beyond a pretty shade to look at. This meaning is what I plan to explore in this article, which is the second part of my deep dive into the world of colors and how humans interact with them.
If we want to analyze colors, we first need to define the difference between a sign and a symbol. At a surface level, it seems that the meaning of colors is, for the most part, something defined by a convention: an orange sign means there is a danger, pink is often associated with girls as blue is for boys, and yellow rose means jealousy but also friendship. In semiotic, these are defined as signs. Signs are in general arbitrary because they don’t have any meaning that is immediately understood by us. All words are signs and a language is, therefore, a system of signs. If you don’t know that language, you cannot understand it.
A symbol is used to represent a concept and is much more vague: a dove is the symbol of peace, a lion is the symbol of strength, and red is the symbol for love or for danger.
As Carl Jung (1964) explained, “The sign is always less than the concept it represents, while a symbol always stands for something more than its obvious and immediate meaning.” In layman’s terms, this means that the sign is simply one thing and tends to be unambiguous because it is defined by a convention, such as a stop sign, the double line in the middle of the road, or the dollar sign.
A symbol has almost an archetypical core: it is widely understood at a deeper level in our subconscious, even if it doesn’t contain defined and easily representable meanings. For example, the red flags often used in revolutions are of that color because the meaning of red lies much deeper into our minds, not because it’s been used for that purpose for centuries as part of an unwritten convention. It could be that we have learned to recognize the color red as the color of danger, passion, and disruption, regardless of our direct experience with it. Have you ever asked yourself why some kids are terrified of snakes, rats, or spiders, even if they have never seen one before? Millions of years of evolution have passed onto us certain knowledge that is crucial for our survival, such as the fear of snakes. They have also taught us that red blood is associated with injuries, pain, or possibly even death, and this information is deeply ingrained in our subconscious mind or in our DNA. From this perspective, the meaning of colors (or at least part of it) is “absolute” in the sense that it precedes any cultural and empirical experience.
One Color, Two Meanings
From the moment we are born, we are already defined by colors. The doctors pick us up, wash us, and then dress us in either pink or blue, depending on our gender. Since these are the first colors we’re often exposed to, it’s worth analyzing them here first as well.
Pink and blue are associated with girls and boys, respectively. However, this cultural convention only started after WWII. Before that, pink was known as a brave and strong color and strongly associated with boys. Meanwhile, blue was seen as calming and delicate and was more suitable for girls.
At the other end of the life cycle, death is another important event that is closely associated with colors. It is associated with the color white in certain parts of the world, but other countries instead relate it to the color black. This is because the meaning of death in these countries is completely different. In the western world, death is the end, and is therefore black. In the Asian cultures, death is only the start of a new era, a new beginning, and a new life cycle. It is the same event, but its meaning is completely different, which is why the colors connected to them are also different.
These aren’t the only colors that have different meanings in various parts of the world. In the Anglo-Saxon culture, green means hope, yellow means jealousy, and blue means sadness. But in Italy, blue is the national teams’ color and definitely doesn’t have a sad connotation (except when they don’t make it to the world cup, but that’s another story). This is also why Kind of Blue, the famous Miles Davis album, has no meaning in the Italian culture.
The study of colors is such a complex task that requires examination from an anthropological, cultural, and scientific point of view. Unfortunately, even with all of this deep knowledge, there is no concrete conclusion for what individual colors mean and how they relate to any scenario at any given time. The meaning evolves over time with society. The use of colors is a constant trial and error experimentation process that involves both contemporary culture and subconscious knowledge.
While the existence of colors obviously predates any sort of human existence, our current perceptions of color can be traced back centuries and even millennia to a time when homo sapiens were only just beginning to evolve into what we are now. Since black is the color of darkness, our ancient humans would have seen it as a symbol of the most dangerous time of the day due to their inability to see predators at night.
On the other hand, green is the color of vegetation and indicates an area where you can probably find food, water, and safety. This could be the reason why kids are afraid of the dark, and green is still the color that induces the most relaxation in humans. Take a walk in any park, and you will be able to experience this firsthand.
Over time, humans have likely evolved to be able to see green because it allowed us to distinguish areas with vegetation from areas with rocks or sand. If you live in the savannah and you are able to see green oases from far away, then you are more likely to survive than others. The same can be said for the ability to see blue, which was likely a result from our ancient amphibious ancestors spending millions of years living in the water, where blue light travels much more easily than any other light wave. All of these things have shaped our existence since the very beginning and are an integral part of our survival instinct.
Treating Color as a Language
As recently as 500 B.C., it is believed by some scholars that humans didn’t have the full ability to differentiate colors as we now do. This is because Ancient Greeks often described colors in a very limited way, such as in Homer’s works where he described the ocean as a “wine-dark sea”. Most likely, they simply did not have words for them as these colors were not as important in their culture as they are to us today. To confirm this, in certain languages of Africa, colors are not defined as we do today in the western world, but with different categories: smooth or rough, dry or humid etc.; they are perceived in conjunction with another set of senses as well.
Colors are not only closely intertwined with our senses. They are also connected with language, and much like the words of a poem or oral story, they are often understood at a subconscious level that is deeply connected with elements we aren’t even aware of. It’s because of this that colors have the power to make visible what lies under the surface of our minds.
To study colors means to also study how languages have been defining them. If we have a word to describe a phenomenon, it’s because this phenomenon is important for our social environment and interactions between people. If we don’t have a word for it, then it’s probably not as important. As the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.”
In the same way, languages evolve and the meaning of colors evolves with them. That’s why studying them is a complex task that requires an enormous amount of knowledge deep-rooted in sociology, linguistics, history, and cultural traditions. We can honestly only scratch the surface of the question, and even that is only possible when we look at one specific region of the world, since each culture will have its own set of meanings and understandings.
At the same time, we don’t want to risk over-analyzing colors with scientific methods since this might actually dull the meaning of color itself. Colors are part of our environment as well as the world of our mind. The more we focus on the rational part of it, the more we reduce its power. Perhaps a bit of mystery surrounding the true and complete meanings of colors is a good thing, and is a large part of what makes them powerful.
With that being said, I’d love to leave you with one of my favorite quotes about color, which comes from the famous French artist Louise Bourgeois.
“Color is stronger than language. It’s a subliminal communication.”
