Sound symbolism

Sound symbolism or phonosemantics is an obscure branch of linguistics and refers to the idea that vocal sounds have meaning. An important concept for understanding this idea is phoneme: phonemes are written between slashes like this /b/.

Relationship with Neuroscience

In the 2003 BBC Reith Lectures, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran outlined his research into the links between brain structure and function. In the fourth lecture of the series he describes the phenomena of synesthesia in which people experience, for example sounds in terms of colours, or sounds in terms of tastes. One type of synesthesia has people seeing numbers, letters of the alphabet, or even musical notes, as having a distinct colour. Based on his research Ramachandran proposes a model for how language might have evolved. The theory is interesting because it may explain how we make metaphors and how sounds can be metaphors for images ? why for example sounds can be described as bright or dull. In explaining how language might have evolved from cross activation of adjacent areas in the brain, Ramachandran notes 4 crucial factors, not all related to language, but which combined might well have resulted in the emergence of it. Two of these processes are of particular interest to us:

Related Topics:
2003 - BBC - Reith Lectures - Vilayanur S. Ramachandran - Brain - Synesthesia - Metaphor - Language - The emergence of it

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Synesthetic Cross modal abstraction: i.e. we recognise properties that sounds and images have in common and abstract them to store them independently. The sounds and shapes of the objects have characteristics in common that can be abstracted, say a sharp, cutting quality of a word, and the shape it describes - what Ramachandran called the 'Bouba/kiki effect' based on the results of an experiment with two abstract shapes and asking people to relate the nonsense words bouba and kiki to them. The effect is real and observable, and repeatable.

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Built in prexisting cross activation. Ramachandran points out that areas of the brain which appear to be involved in the mix-ups in synesthesia are adjacent to each other physically, and that cross-wiring, or cross activation could explain synesthesia, and our ability to make metaphors. He notes that the areas that control the muscles around the mouth are also adjacent to the visual centres, and suggests that certain words appear to make our mouth imitate the thing we are describing. Examples of this might be words like teeny weeny, diminutive to describe small things; large or enormous to describe big things.

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In these two factors we have some important clues as to how vocal sounds can function as metaphors, or symbols. The most obvious case of a sound representing something is onomatopoeia in which we seek to imitate the sound something makes ? e.g. a dog goes woof woof . However this is simply simile, and metaphor making is a more profound process. We can see that it begins (from this point of view) with abstraction of similar qualities. So we might say that Juliet is the sun. But we don?t mean that Juliet is a enormous ball of fire in the sky. What we are doing when we say this is that like the sun Juliet is warm and, using yet another metaphor, she brings light into our lives.

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/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. Because it is unvoiced /p/ is more subtle: /b/ forms blunt bulges, whereas /p/ tends to precise points; /b/ blows up, whereas /p/ simply pops. Magnus? writing is full of this type of language play which makes it delightful to read. She has investigated every consonant, and writes about several in depth including /s/ which turns out to have a very strong association with the serpentine ? see if you can think of an adjective for a snake that does not contain /s/.

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