Colour semiotics - colour memes. It depends what was going on in the head of the person who made the questonaire up.

Although colour is simply variations of visible light frequencies, ideological associations can be strong in certain societies, and act as tribal signifiers.

Interestingly, interpretations of colour meanings vary widely from society to society, and some societies will even class different shades as belonging to different colour groups. Even the idea of basic primary colours has no scientific basis in visible light, and is purely a social construct.

The use of blue and gold for royalty may stem back to Egypt, where lapis lazuli and gold were some of the most sought after colours. After this, during the phoenician period, it was red/purple that signified royalty, as the phoenicians exported fine robed coloured with murex snail shell dye.

Today there are all sorts of political colour memes that simplify complex situations into understandable shades, or combinations of shades, but this is in fact a barrier to progress, as it tends to polarise complex variations.

WRT the use of red white and blue in western societies, this may be a combination of the older ideas above, with blue, and Egyptians symbolism being widely revived during the 18th century.

So what we have is Egyptian memes transferring across time.

Dave L









Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2005 11:04AM by Dave L.