Abstract
Abstract The current study is the first to attempt to perform a sound-symbolic analysis of the spells featured in the Harry Potter series. The present research analysed 171 spells in terms of syllable lengths and the number of voiced obstruents and stressed low vowels. The results showed that the Killing Curse, Avada Kedavra, which is known as one of the most powerful and sinister spells, has the most voiced obstruents and stressed low vowels. The study then experimentally examined whether three factors – syllable lengths, voiced obstruents and low vowels – evoked the imagery of powerful spells using nonce words. The results suggested that voiced obstruents and stressed low vowels are sound-symbolically associated with powerful imagery, which aligns with the studies in Pokémonastics concerning strong character names (Kawahara et al. 2018; Shih et al. 2019). Moreover, names containing more syllables were favoured as powerful spells by those who are unfamiliar with the Harry Potter series, which is evidence of the iconicity of quantity in general English speakers.
Highlights
Introduction1.1 Sound symbolismThere are contrastive characteristics in natural language systems
1.1 Sound symbolismThere are contrastive characteristics in natural language systems
The current study presents a sound-symbolic analysis of the spells in the Harry Potter series
Summary
1.1 Sound symbolismThere are contrastive characteristics in natural language systems. There is no common sequence of sounds among these words across the six languages. Such an arbitrary form-meaning mapping is conventionalised based upon language users’ agreement within a community to which they belong (Perniss et al 2010). Natural language displays a non-arbitrary relationship between forms and meanings, which is referred to as iconicity, a term covering a variety of phenomena, including sound symbolism, ideophones and iconicity (Perniss et al 2010). Sound symbolism is defined here as a non-arbitrary, iconic or motivated form-meaning mapping in which certain sounds and forms at the segmental level and beyond are perceived as particular images or meanings (for a subclassification of sound symbolism, see Hinton et al 1994/2006). One example exhibiting the sound-symbolism at the segmental level is the mil/mal effect
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