Talk:Sound symbolism

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This whole article is a mess.

First, there are problems with organization. For example, the last paragraph begins, "/p/ has quite a similar symbolism because the process of making the sound /p/ is identical except that /b/ is voiced, and /p/ is unvoiced." /p/ has a similar symbolism to what exactly? The previous paragraph (and in fact the entire section) was about Ramachandran's ideas on metaphors. And the section is entitled "Relationship with Neuroscience".

Second, the tone is as far from encyclopedic as possible. It's more of a fan page for Margaret Magnus's pop-science book "Gods of the Word" than an article. Here's a good example: "The sounds of these words, evoke images, and images have an emotional impact, and every advertiser knows that emotions determine behaviour! Prozac was originally called Fluoxetine before the marketing guys got hold of it...."

Third, the article is extremely POV, being nothing but Magnus's ideas, and all of the support she's found for those ideas in historical and modern times.

There clearly is something to phonosemantics. Nobody disputes intra-language iconism in Japanese, Yoruba, etc. Nobody doubts that the pook/pak/peek experiments show at least some inter-language iconism.

However, this quote from the article is another story: "/b/ forms blunt bulges, whereas /p/ tends to precise points; /b/ blows up, whereas /p/ simply pops". It certainly sounds cute, but it means very little, and what it means is wrong. Think about "pan" vs. "ban" or "lap" vs. "lab". How precise is "plateau", how blunt is "bristle"? (It's also a possible copyvio from Magnus's book and/or site, but I haven't checked that.)

The real problem is that there's no established consensus out there. Linguistics as a whole is a pretty young and under-manned science, and this is at best a nascent sub-speciality of minority interest.

Do a quick search on sci.lang or LINGUIST for works like phonosemantics, iconism, ideophone, phonesthetics (there's not even a consensus on the terms...) and you'll see that almost everyone making strong claims disagrees with almost everyone else. And the quality ranges from the plausible scholarly speculations of John Lawler to the usual cranks trying to prove that their national language is descended from Sumerian. To an outsider, it's hard to tell what to believe.

Wikipedia should have an article on phonosemantics (or some other related term). But this--or anything else pulled straight from "Margo's Magical Letter Land"--is not it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.109.111.60 (talk • contribs).

I couldn't agree more! There are many problems with this article, and to be honest I wouldn't know where to start fixing them. It says that many of the phenomena aren't universal, yet happily goes on giving English examples. It cites Plato's Cratylus crudely out of context, without the crucial part of Socrates admitting that his theory is problematic as there are innumerable counterexamples. The tone is far too colloquial. The section 'Application of Phonosemantics' is simply original research (I will remove it in a minute, see WP:CITE). It looks like the part on Japanese phonosemantics has been copy-pasted from another article without any regard for structure or flow, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are copyvios to be found in other parts of the texts.

There are a few useful things, however, especially on the history of phonosemantics. Merging the useful material into Phonosemantics and redirecting this one might be the start of a solution. — mark ✎ 16:17, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Certainly, the article needs work. Overall, however, it is a much better treatment of phonesthesia than we might have feared. I really think you are being a bit harsh with Magnus, dear 69.109.111.60, though I tried to tone down the plug for "Gods of the Word." The fact is that phonesthesia has long been a taboo subject in circles traveled by serious linguists, which has harmed scientific endeavor in this field, creating a situation in which an encyclopedia must make an extra effort to maintain NPOV. I have read that book and really do not think calling it "pop science" is fair or justified, though many 'official' linguists who have their own positions to defend would certainly agree with such a judgment. In this case, the scholarly consensus itself may reflect substantial bias. That is what Magnus' popularization stems from.

With time, we ought to be able to improve the treatment of this subject in Wikipedia. In my own view, the concept of the phonestheme deserves separate treatment from the many issues of sound symbolism generally. With hopes of further improvement to come in the future, I have at least taken the step of linking to the other article, to which I added a minor item, a couple of (initial) references, and some internal links.

I may not have enough experience as a wikipedian to fully grasp the point you were making, Mark, about merging some articles but I do concur that reorganizing material now in various different Wikipedia articles would help with the reorganization of this one. Bibliography for this subject is extremely problematic but is something I could help with (although I'm not sure how much detail would be appropriate in a generalist reference like Wikipedia).--Ph7five 14:43, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I wrote the part on Japanese phonosemantics myself (section "Phenomimes and psychomimes"), and it certainly isn't a copy-paste from anywhere. I agree that I had a hard time finding a place for it in the article. Please feel free to move it where you think it belongs, and edit it if you think it's wrong. Other than that, I agree, the article is not the best around. — AdiJapan ☎ 16:29, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I have in my last few edits pruned a lot of nonsense and I have tried to do away with the uncritical endorsements of Manske as much as possible. I have also put the Cratylus thing right, noting that Socrates conceded that "My first notions of original names are truly wild and ridiculous" after being faced by an overwhelming number of counterexamples. There is still very much to be done. Phonosemantics is an intriguing phenomenon, well worth a good article, as our anonymous editor above points out. I'm not sure if I have the time to do something about it in the near future; I surely hope others can help out and to that end I'll put up a notice at Wikiproject Languages. — mark ✎ 19:33, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Sound symbolism applied in literature 2 Sound symbolism and synesthesia 3 Disclaimer 4 Phonaesthesia

[edit] Sound symbolism applied in literature

There is not much in the article at present about sound symbolism (in many cases, before the modern formulation of what sound symbolism is) in literature. Poets especially have made much use of sound symbolism, e.g. Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallarme, etc. I don't plan on discussing this in the article until I have references however. I remember for example a literary critic pointing out that Rimbaud's heavy use of the voiceless velar plosive in the first 5 or so sentences of his prose poem Villes was meant to give the impression of the clashing and dissonant sounds of the modern city. Alexander 007 08:48, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sound symbolism and synesthesia

As Ramachandran's co-author, I may not be the most impartial commentator, but I am certainly knowledgable about our attempts to link synesthesia with sound symbolism. I am quite happy to help work on the Relationship with Neuroscience section. I have been working mostly on the synaesthesia page recently, but added some mention of the links with other phenomena, including the kiki/bouba example. Note that this phenomenon was originally noted by Wolfgang Kohler (using the words takete and maluma) and expanded by Lawrence Marks. Subsequent to our 2001 article, follow-up experiments have shown that children as young as 2 1/2 show the "kiki/bouba" effect (Maurer et al., 2006), and that the effect can be replicated in more precise reaction time studies (Westbury, 2005). Edhubbard 23:45, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disclaimer

The bulk of sound symbolism is largely discredited by the vast majority of linguists. The article should begin with the fact that outside of onomatopoetics, trained linguists don't believe in it. This is junk science for the most part and it should be reported as such.

(The author of the above lines didn't sign them.)

On the contrary, there is a slowly growing body of evidence in favor of it from respected scientific sources. I'll agree that the vast majority of linguists "discredit" it-- but that doesn't mean much to me. The flat earth theory held wide sway at one point too. It would be worthwhile to give readers a sense of how controversial these findings are, and how they contradict established linguistic principles (Saussurian arbitrariness of the sign, etc.). I've done [of course unusable] original research in which participants agreed on the meanings of pseudowords with p<.001. Doesn't seem like junk science to me.

Some possible sources: Brent Berlin's Ethnobiological Classification, Bolinger's "The Sign is Not Arbitrary," Janice Nuckolls' "The Case for Sound Symbolism."

What I think is important is that etymology need not be entirely linear. If language speakers are aware of the sounds of their words along with their meanings, then some sort of Bolinger-style "associative lexical influence" can play into the evolution of the lexicon to develop clusters and phoneme-sememe correlations.

Hope this is helpful/convincing. Starvingpoet 07:48, 24 January 2007 (UTC)starvingpoet

[edit] Phonaesthesia

has a redirect to this article, but it isn't mentioned here. someone who is willing to explain that term? --213.47.167.58 21:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)