Cover not available
Part of
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

| Keio University
| Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology and Cultural Logic
| 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
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.14.03kaw
References
Ahlner, F. & Zlatev, J
2010 Cross-modal iconicity: A cognitive semiotic approach to sound symbolism. Sign Systems Studies 38(1–4): 298–348.Google Scholar
Barkhuysen, P., Krahmer, E. & Swerts, M
2010 Crossmodal and incremental perception of audiovisual cues to emotional speech. Language and Speech 53(1): 3–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berlin, B
2006 The first congress of ethnozoological nomenclature. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12: 23–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, R. & Ford, M
1961 Address in American English. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 62: 375–385. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cassidy, K.W., Kelly, M.H. & Sharoni, L.A.J
1999 Inferring gender from name phonology. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 128: 362–381. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cutler, A., McQueen, J. & Robinson, K
1990 Elizabeth and John: Sound patterns of men’s and women’s names. Journal of Linguistics 26: 471–482. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hinton, L., Nichols, J. & Ohala, J.J
(eds) 1994 Sound Symbolism. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Irwin, F.W. & Newland, E
1940 A genetic study of the naming of visual figures. The Journal of Psychology 9: 3–16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Kawahara, S. & Shinohara, K
2012 A 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.Google Scholar
Köhler, W
1929[1947] Gestalt Psychology. New York NY: Liveright.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M
1980 Metaphors We Live By. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
1999 Philosophy in the Flesh. New York NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lindauer, M.S
1988 Size and distance perception of the physiognomic stimulus “taketa”. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 26(3): 217–220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1990 The meanings of the physiognomic stimuli taketa and maluma . Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 28(1): 47–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Macmillan, N.A. & Creelman, C.D
2005 Detection Theory: A User’s Guide, 2nd edn. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Martino, G. & Marks, L.E
2000 Cross-modal interaction between vision and touch: The role of synesthetic correspondence. Perception 29(6): 745–754. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ohala, J.J
1983 The phonological end justifies any means. In Proceedings of the 13th International Congress of Linguists, S. Hattori & K. Inoue (eds), 232–243. Tokyo: Sanseido.Google Scholar
1994 The 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.Google Scholar
Perfors, A
2004 What’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
2001 Synaesthesia. A window into perception, thought and language. Journal of Consciousness Studies 8(12): 3–34.Google Scholar
Sapir, E
1929 A study in phonetic symbolism. Journal of Experimental Psychology 12(3): 225–239. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Saussure, F
1916[1972] Course in General Linguistics. Peru IL: Open Court Publishing. ( Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot. Translated by R. Harris).Google Scholar
Shinohara, K. & Kawahara, S
2013 The sound symbolic nature of Japanese maid names. Proceedings of the Japanese Cognitive Linguistics Association 13: 183–193.Google Scholar
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
1985 Gender and the phonology of North American first names. Sex Roles 13: 429–440. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spence, C
2011 Crossmodal correspondences: A tutorial review. Attention, Perception and Psychophysics 73(4): 971–995. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ultan, R
1978 Size-sound symbolism. In Universals of Human Language, II: Phonology, J. Greenberg (ed.), 525–568. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Whissell, C
2001 Cues to referent gender in randomly constructed names. Perceptual and Motor Skills 93: 856–858. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wright, S. & Hay, J
2002 Fred 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.Google Scholar
Wright, S.K., Hay, J. & Bent, T
2005 Ladies first? Phonology, frequency, and the naming conspiracy. Linguistics 43(3): 531–561. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 6 other publications

Kawahara, Shigeto & Gakuji Kumagai
2019. Expressing evolution in Pokémon names: Experimental explorations. Journal of Japanese Linguistics 35:1 ► pp. 3 ff. DOI logo
2021. What voiced obstruents symbolically represent in Japanese: evidence from the Pokémon universe. Journal of Japanese Linguistics 37:1 ► pp. 3 ff. DOI logo
Kawahara, Shigeto, Atsushi Noto & Gakuji Kumagai
2018. Sound Symbolic Patterns in Pokémon Names. Phonetica 75:3 ► pp. 219 ff. DOI logo
Kumagai, Gakuji, Ryoko Uno & Kazuko Shinohara
2022. Chapter 3. The sound-symbolic effects of consonants on food texture. In The Language of Food in Japanese [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 25], ► pp. 80 ff. DOI logo
Sakamoto, Maki, Junji Watanabe & Koichi Yamagata
2021. Automatic Estimation of Multidimensional Personality From a Single Sound-Symbolic Word. Frontiers in Psychology 12 DOI logo
Shinohara, Kazuko, Shigeto Kawahara & Hideyuki Tanaka
2020. Visual and Proprioceptive Perceptions Evoke Motion-Sound Symbolism: Different Acceleration Profiles Are Associated With Different Types of Consonants. Frontiers in Psychology 11 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 march 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.