Methodological issues in the study of phonetic symbolism

TLDR

Phonetic symbolism in poetry is an expanding field with inconsistent findings, and sound‑symbolic lexical entries follow similar principles yet remain largely fossilized. The study proposes a method to reconcile these incongruous research findings on phonetic symbolism. The authors link individual speech sounds to elementary percepts and emotions through a theoretical structural analysis, then combine large‑scale statistical investigation of repeated phonemes with local analyses to capture both global and local sound‑symbolic effects. The method explains skeptical conclusions by revealing that local sound effects are often missed, and it accounts for both statistical correlations and the perception of a pervasive emotional atmosphere in poems.

Abstract

Abstract There is a growing research literature on phonetic symbolism in poetry, sometimes with incongruent results. Through a theoretical structural analysis we show that, (a) individual speech sounds have (sometimes conflicting) potentials to suggest elementary percepts, such as abruptness, hardness, smoothness; and (b) from these elementary percepts some general psychological atmosphere may be abstracted that may be individuated in specific emotions as ‘love,’ ‘joy,’ or ‘anger,’ by semantic feature-addition. This proposal can reconcile incongruous research results. Sound-symbolic lexical entries are governed by similar principles, but fossilized. Large-scale statistical investigation may reveal significant sound-symbolic effects only when the same phonemes repeat throughout the poem. They may, however, miss conspicuous local sound effects, revealed only by local analysis. Some sceptical conclusions in the research literature may be due to this phenomenon. The proposed method may account not only for statistical correlations, but also for the perception of a pervasive emotional atmosphere in a poem.