The Language of Colour provides a fresh and innovative approach to the study of colour from the co-author of the best-selling textbook, Reading Images.

Moving on from the meanings of single colours, Theo van Leeuwen develops the theory that many different features shape the way we attach meaning to the colours we see in front of us, and the idea that colour schemes are more important than individual colours. Chapter topics include:

a brief history of the meanings of colour
the relationship between language and colour names within a cultural context
corporate uses of colour
the meaning of colour in everyday life.

Spanning a wide range of examples from graphic design to the visual arts, this title presents a cutting-edge and engaging overview of the use of colour in a wide variety of situations and cultural and historical contexts. Incorporating both contemporary and traditional theory and supplemented by questions and ideas for projects at the end of every chapter, The Language of Colour is the ideal textbook for students of multimodality and language and communication within applied linguistics, communication studies, art and design and cultural studies.

Theo van Leeuwen is Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is author of An Introduction to Social Semiotics (2005), Reading Images (second edition, 2006) with Gunther Kress, and The Language of New Media Design (2008) with Radan Martinec, all published by Routledge.

Linguistics/Communication Studies/Media Studies/Art and Communication