SOUND SYMBOLISM
How do we get meaning from both verbal and nonverbal human speech sounds?
SOUND SYMBOLISM
"when a sound unit goes beyond its linguistic function as a contrastive non-meaning bearing unit, to directly express some kind of meaning" (Nuckolls 1999)
SOUND SYMBOLISM
- phoneme
- syllable
- feature
- tone
LOGICAL DISTINCTIONS
- There are three logical distinctions in the notion of sound symbolism.
- The relationship between these three distinctions are what help sounds to create meaning.
- ( Nuckolls 1999)
1
Example: The sound of this video from my childhood bringing back feelings of being a child again
The Icon
refers, denotes, or communicates by its resemblance to a sensation, feeling, or idea
2
Example: a kid covering their ears due to hearing a sound they do not like
The Index
communicates through physical contingency or symptomatic signaling
(The physical impacts that hearing a sound has on the human body)
3
The Symbol
Example: the sound of fireworks being linked to the idea of celebration
a conventional link between a sound and an idea, without any apparent motivation
Example of Relationship Between Logical Distinctions
IN DEPTH
- Relationships between the icon, the index, and the symbol can lead to meaning in Intonation.
- Intonation: rises and falls in pitch
- indicated through emotional and gestural expression
- Example:
- Icon: the utterance "Excuse me..."
- Index: can be indexical of a heightened emotional state
- Symbol: the difference between high pitch and low pitch are symbolic
- (Huttar 1968)
EVIDENCE OF SOUND SYMBOLISM
SUPPORTING EVIDENCE
A highly debated topic in the field of linguistics and psychology
The Kaluli of Papau, New Guinea
- Links between linguistic and musical sound, emotional expression, and ecology have been studied in the Kaluli Tribe of Papau
- The Kaluli language exemplifies a plethora of ideophones in their vocabulary
- ideophone: lexicalized sound imitative words
- The use of sound symbolism helps this particular society express themselves both emotionally and culturally
- Ideophones used in their language:
- bird cries: spirit reflections of the deceased
- waterfall sounds and movements: help to indicate concepts of place (where they have worked, lived, etc.)
- Places in this society are spoken about through the water that flows through them and this is indicated through ideophones in their language
- other environmental stimuli
- (Feld 1982)
INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES OF WESTERN NORTH AMERICA
- Alternation of consonants to signal diminutive, augmentative, and related ideas
- Diminutive and augmentative consonant shifts:
- Diminutive: indicates smallness of an object/quality
- Augmentative: indicates largeness of an object/quality
- Tonality and hardness were found to symbolize and indicate diminutive and augmentative notions of these languages
- tonality: raising of consonantal frequency to be more forward
- hardness: more forceful manner of articulation
- more tension and muscle activity
- Diminutive words are indicated with a reduction in tone and hardness
- Augmentative words are indicated with an increase in tone and hardness
- (Nichols 1971)
WHAT FACTORS INFLUENCE SOUND SYMBOLISM?
INFLUENCING FACTORS
- In a study conducted by Timothy Allen Krause, sound symbolism and how it is impacted by the factors of age and gender are examined.
- Participants of his study were asked to rate artificial words on a scale of being "hard" words or "soft" words
- A random sample of 292 participants that were recruited from Craigslist advertisements were used in the study
- (Krause 2015)
- Data was collected through an online Survey
- 75 Questions
- Instructed to rate words on a scale of being "soft" or "hard"
- Instructed to identify a product that they believed each word represented
Age groups were split up into the following categories: Millennials,
Generation Xers, and Baby Boomers
Study Results
Do age and gender impact sound symbolism?
- Krause (2015) found that:
- Gender did not provide statistically significant data
- Gender is not a factor in sound symbolism
- Age did provide statistically significant data
- Age is a factor in sound symbolism
- There was a correlation between a person’s age (whether they were Millennials, Generation Xers, or Baby Boomers) and how they assigned meaning to sounds.
- Baby Boomers were found to find sounds that the other groups considered to be “hard” to be “soft” sounds.
- Krause concludes that the data he found can allude to a phonosemantic shift that has occurred over time.
- (Krause 2015)
CONCLUSION
- Linguistic sounds do more than communicate messages
- Linguistic sounds help to express our emotional states, aesthetic apperceptions, and our connection with the world around us
- Sound symbolic patterning has been found in most languages, which means language is not completely arbitrary
- (Nuckolls 1999)