Abstract:
This article presents a brief review of several approaches of ‘grammar’, as
the basis for a discussion of culturally produced regularities in the uses of
colour; that is, the possibility of extending the use of ‘grammar’ to colour as
a communicational resource. Colour is discussed as a semiotic resource –
a mode, which, like other modes, is multifunctional in its uses in the
culturally located making of signs. The authors make some use of the
Jakobson/Halle theory of ‘distinctive features’, highlighting as signifierresources
those of differentiation, saturation, purity, modulation, value and
hue. These are treated as features of a grammar of colour rather than as
features of colour itself. The article demonstrates its theoretical points
through the analysis of several examples and links notions of ‘colour
schemes’ and ‘colour harmony’ into the social and cultural concept of
grammar in the more traditional sense.
