Article published in:

Iconicity: East meets West
Edited by Masako K. Hiraga, William J. Herlofsky, Kazuko Shinohara and Kimi Akita
[Iconicity in Language and Literature 14] 2015
► pp. 57–70

Iconic inferences about personality

From sounds and shapes

Shigeto Kawahara | Keio University

Kazuko Shinohara | Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology and Cultural Logic

Joseph Grady | LLC

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.

Published online: 12 February 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.14.03kaw

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