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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

SOUND UNITS:

  • 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

1

Example: The sound of this video from my childhood bringing back feelings of being a child again

The Icon

This sound is an icon.

refers, denotes, or communicates by its resemblance to a sensation, feeling, or idea

2

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

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

KALULI OF PAPUA

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)

WESTERN NORTH AMERICA

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)

STUDY INFORMATION

Participant Information

Data Collection

  • 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

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

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)

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