‘Italian Blues’: Does bilingualism modulate colour categories?

In a psycholinguistic study we explored semantic shift of focal colours for ‘blue’ terms in Italian-English bilinguals. Italian speakers require more than one basic colour term (BCT) to name blue colours: blu ‘dark blue’ and azzurro ‘light/medium blue’; celeste ‘sky/light blue’ is salient, too. Participants were Italian-English bilinguals residing in Liverpool (N=13); their naming data, collected in two languages, was compared to that in Italian monolinguals (N=13, Alghero) and English monolinguals (N=16, Liverpool). Eight Munsell charts embracing the BLUE area of colour space (7.5BG–5PB, Value 2–9, Chroma 2–12) were employed. An unconstrained colour naming method was used to name each Munsell chip (M=237); this was followed by participant’s indication of the best example (focal colour) of blu, azzurro and celeste (Italian) or blue and light blue (English). Here we report two main findings relating to bilinguals’ focal colours of ‘blue’ terms, in both Italian (L1) and English (L2), and compare these with the corresponding monolinguals’ foci. Lightness shift: for the majority of the Italian-English bilinguals, their L2 blue foci are semantically down-shifted towards L1 blu ‘dark blue’ foci. The blue-towards-blu semantic shift conceivably results from orthographic and phonologic similarity of the homophone Italian blu and English blue which facilitates asymmetric L1-L2 mediation in favour of the L1 blu concept. Hue shift: proficient bilinguals revealed a hue shift of L1 azzurro concept towards English monolinguals’ blue, specifically, from azure/turquoise, characteristics of Italian monolinguals, to blue with a purplish hint. These findings are considered as Whorfian effects resulting in modulation of cognitive representations of some of the ‘blue’ terms in bilinguals’ L1 and L2; the modulation is contingent on the level of English proficiency, duration of immersion into L2-speaking environment and degree of L2 acculturation.