Exploring the Cultural Domain of Hausa Colour Terms

The study of colour terms has been an interesting phenomenon in linguistics. The power ofcolour terms to name and classify things, animals and persons in purely traditional way cannotbe over emphasized across cultures. Of course, there are universal tendencies on the nature ofcolour naming across languages but such universality does not apply to the socio-cultural aspectof all societies. This was supported by Durbin (1971), Casson (1994, 1997), Downman 92003),Bature (2005), Danladi (2010) and Aujara (2021) who believed that the size of colour vocabularyis certainly a measure of its cultural complexity, the smaller the vocabulary, the simpler thesociety. Hence, this paper examines the socio-cultural domain of colours terms in Hausasocieties. Hausa is a member of Afro- Asiatic family and is estimated to have about 1 billion L1users according to ethnologue .com. Purposeful Random Sampling and survey method wereused and 160 research subjects were selected from the speakers of Hausa language in Sokotostate to source data for the study. The findings, from 154 respondents, reveal that colour is verysignificant to Hausa culture as it cut across every aspect of socio-cultural, economic, political andreligious angles of a typical Hausa social group. It names and classifies traditional cloths anddomestic animals on one hand and describes/classifies people or race on the other. The paperalso reveals that colour terms are used in rituals and traditional epithet of Hausa society. Hence,it concludes that colour is an indispensable tool for expressing deep thought, ideas and powerfulemotions in purely traditional Hausa way.