Linguistic and Poetic Sound Symbolism

Abstract

Condillac achieved an impressive continuity between quite different modes of linguistic representation, with the implicit idea that the most fundamental or ‘natural’ kinds are still accessible to the modern literary writer as a ‘second’ nature. There are a number of contemporaries who study in detail exactly how this can be achieved, in order to show that language is capable of a high level of naturalistic imitation, or, in their terms, that language can ‘echo’ nature. This chapter focuses on Antoine Court de Gébelin and Charles de Brosses. They re-interpret the well-established idea of ‘l'harmonie imitative’ in poetry as a fundamental level of sound symbolism in language, present from the very origins of language itself. Their ideas illustrate an acute contemporary sensitivity to the theory of imitation, and it is worth weighing this in mind against the teleological temptation of some critics to regard them as prototypes of later concepts.