The current study offers a new case of an iconic relationship amongst different modalities of cognition, going beyond traditional studies of sound symbolism. We report experiments that show that particular types of personalities can be iconically related to particular types of sounds and shapes. Two experiments show that “inaccessible types of personality” are iconically associated with a class of sounds called “obstruents” as well as with angular shapes. The first connection – the one between personalities and sounds – adds to the large body of literature on sound symbolism. The second connection – the link between personalities and shapes – goes beyond the traditional cases of sound symbolism, instantiating a case of trans-modal iconic projection from one cognitive modality to another.
2010Cross-modal iconicity: A cognitive semiotic approach to sound symbolism. Sign Systems Studies 38(1–4): 298–348.
Barkhuysen, P., Krahmer, E. & Swerts, M.
2010Crossmodal and incremental perception of audiovisual cues to emotional speech. Language and Speech 53(1): 3–30.
Berlin, B.
2006The first congress of ethnozoological nomenclature. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12: 23–44.
Brown, R. & Ford, M.
1961Address in American English. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 62: 375–385.
Cassidy, K.W., Kelly, M.H. & Sharoni, L.A.J.
1999Inferring gender from name phonology. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 128: 362–381.
Cutler, A., McQueen, J. & Robinson, K.
1990Elizabeth and John: Sound patterns of men’s and women’s names. Journal of Linguistics 26: 471–482.
Hinton, L., Nichols, J. & Ohala, J.J.
(eds)1994Sound Symbolism. Cambridge: CUP.
Irwin, F.W. & Newland, E.
1940A genetic study of the naming of visual figures. The Journal of Psychology 9: 3–16.
Jespersen, O.
1922[1933]Symbolic value of the vowel i. In Linguistica. Selected Papers in English, French and German, Vol. 1, 283–303. Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard.
Kawahara, S. & Shinohara, K.
2012A tripartite trans-modal relationship between sounds, shapes and emotions: A case of abrupt modulation. In Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, N. Miyake, D. Peebles & R.P. Cooper (eds), 569–574. Austin TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Köhler, W.
1929[1947]Gestalt Psychology. New York NY: Liveright.
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M.
1980Metaphors We Live By. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M.
1999Philosophy in the Flesh. New York NY: Basic Books.
Lindauer, M.S.
1988Size and distance perception of the physiognomic stimulus “taketa”. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 26(3): 217–220.
Lindauer, M.S.
1990The meanings of the physiognomic stimuli taketa and maluma. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 28(1): 47–50.
Macmillan, N.A. & Creelman, C.D.
2005Detection Theory: A User’s Guide, 2nd edn. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Martino, G. & Marks, L.E.
2000Cross-modal interaction between vision and touch: The role of synesthetic correspondence. Perception 29(6): 745–754.
Ohala, J.J.
1983The phonological end justifies any means. In Proceedings of the 13th International Congress of Linguists, S. Hattori & K. Inoue (eds), 232–243. Tokyo: Sanseido.
Ohala, J.J.
1994The frequency code underlies the sound symbolic use of voice pitch. In Sound Symbolism, L. Hinton, J. Nichols & J.J. Ohala (eds), 325–347. Cambridge: CUP.
Perfors, A.
2004What’s in a name? The effect of sound symbolism on perception of facial attractiveness. In
Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, K. Forbus, D. Gentner & T. Regier (eds), 1617
.
Ramachandran, V.S. & Hubbard, E.M.
2001Synaesthesia. A window into perception, thought and language. Journal of Consciousness Studies 8(12): 3–34.
Sapir, E.
1929A study in phonetic symbolism. Journal of Experimental Psychology 12(3): 225–239.
de Saussure, F.
1916[1972]Course in General Linguistics. Peru IL: Open Court Publishing. (
Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot. Translated by R. Harris).
Shinohara, K. & Kawahara, S.
2013The sound symbolic nature of Japanese maid names. Proceedings of the Japanese Cognitive Linguistics Association 13: 183–193.
Shinohara, K. & Kawahara, S.
To appear. A cross-linguistic study of sound symbolism: The images of size. In Proceedings of Berkeley Linguistics Society 36. Berkeley CA: BLS.
Slater, A.S. & Feinman, S.
1985Gender and the phonology of North American first names. Sex Roles 13: 429–440.
Spence, C.
2011Crossmodal correspondences: A tutorial review. Attention, Perception and Psychophysics 73(4): 971–995.
Ultan, R.
1978Size-sound symbolism. In Universals of Human Language, II: Phonology, J. Greenberg (ed.), 525–568. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
Whissell, C.
2001Cues to referent gender in randomly constructed names. Perceptual and Motor Skills 93: 856–858.
Wright, S. & Hay, J.
2002Fred and trema: A phonological conspiracy. In Gendered Practices in Language, S. Benor, M. Rose, D. Sharma, J. Sweetland & Q. Zhang (eds), 175–191. Standford CA: CSLI.
Wright, S.K., Hay, J. & Bent, T.
2005Ladies first? Phonology, frequency, and the naming conspiracy. Linguistics 43(3): 531–561.
Cited by
Cited by 7 other publications
AKÇATAŞ, Ahmet & Emrah EROL
2023. Fonosemantiğe Genel Bir Bakış. Kültür Araştırmaları Dergisi :17 ► pp. 304 ff.
Kawahara, Shigeto & Gakuji Kumagai
2019. Expressing evolution in Pokémon names: Experimental explorations. Journal of Japanese Linguistics 35:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Kawahara, Shigeto & Gakuji Kumagai
2021. What voiced obstruents symbolically represent in Japanese: evidence from the Pokémon universe. Journal of Japanese Linguistics 37:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Kawahara, Shigeto, Atsushi Noto & Gakuji Kumagai
2018. Sound Symbolic Patterns in Pokémon Names. Phonetica 75:3 ► pp. 219 ff.
2020. Visual and Proprioceptive Perceptions Evoke Motion-Sound Symbolism: Different Acceleration Profiles Are Associated With Different Types of Consonants. Frontiers in Psychology 11
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 16 november 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.