Abstract
AbstractThis article will explore the linguistic implications of employing and creating sound symbolism (ideophones, onomatopoeia and interjections) in Italian Disney comics. It will endeavour to investigate the way sound symbolic forms in both imported Disney US comics and original Italian stories have profoundly influenced the development of Italian sound symbolism in the last century. The diachronic analysis is carried out thanks to the creation of a corpus of ideophones and interjections from 210 Disney stories published between 1932 and 2013. The corpus will allow the author to investigate how these forms have changed diachronically throughout the eighty years under investigation with the final aim of highlighting changes and patterns in both original and translated Italian stories. The unique status of ideophones, confirmed by language, sociological and neurological studies, has led to interesting experimentations but also to complicated dynamics. Certain linguistic settings seem to foster a better affinity towards the device- particularly if compared to Romance languages, such as Italian and Spanish, that often have to rely on Anglophone renditions. Anglicisation has indeed overshadowed previous original attempts. Nevertheless, recent creations, particularly from cartoonists, bear witness to a willingness to stretch language again in order to enhance language iconicity.
Highlights
The linguistics branch defined as ‘sound symbolism’ studies the relationship between the sound of an utterance and its meaning (Hinton 1994, 1-2) and it is concerned with those ‘marked words depictive of sensory images [...] noted for their special sound patterns, distinct grammatical properties and sensory meanings’ (Dingemanse 2012, 654)
The information that led to the creation of these time frames has been gathered throughout the corpus analysis and thanks to the use of framework offered by several scholars in the field (Boschi et al 1990; Verda 1990; Stajano 1999; Gallo & Bonomi 2006; Becattini et al 2012): Pre- and during war (1932 to 1941): Pre-war years were characterised by a general insecurity and variability in the use of ideophones, in particular
The analysis offered has provided new original data on the use of ideophones and interjections in Disney comics since their first publication in the 1930s
Summary
The linguistics branch defined as ‘sound symbolism’ studies the relationship between the sound of an utterance and its meaning (Hinton 1994, 1-2) and it is concerned with those ‘marked words depictive of sensory images [...] noted for their special sound patterns, distinct grammatical properties and sensory meanings’ (Dingemanse 2012, 654) In simpler words, these are words that try to depict, capture and imitate sensory perceptions, in an iconic (i.e. ideophones) and non-iconic (i.e. interjections) fashion. Practical difficulties arose for editors, creators and translators who had to deal with the device’s ‘aberrance’ (Newman 2001, 251), that is, its tendency to ‘stretch’ the system of languages by forcing them to depart from their normal structure This resulted in a slow and still on-going process of linguistic adaptation of these English sounds. This has been noticed for other languages (especially Spanish) that—much like Italian—are subjected to an ongoing sound-symbolic language stretching and this is exactly the process that this article aims to describe
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