Abstract
Research on the relation between sound and meaning in language has reported substantial evidence for implicit associations between articulatory-acoustic characteristics of phonemes and emotions. In the present study, we specifically tested the relation between the acoustic properties of a text and its emotional tone as perceived by readers. To this end, we asked participants to assess the emotional tone of single stanzas extracted from a large variety of poems. The selected stanzas had either an extremely high, a neutral, or an extremely low average formant dispersion. To assess the average formant dispersion per stanza, all words were phonetically transcribed and the distance between the first and second formant per vowel was calculated. Building on a long tradition of research on associations between sound frequency on the one hand and non-acoustic concepts such as size, strength, or happiness on the other hand, we hypothesized that stanzas with an extremely high average formant dispersion would be rated lower on items referring to Potency (dominance) and higher on items referring to Activity (arousal) and Evaluation (emotional valence). The results confirmed our hypotheses for the dimensions of Potency and Evaluation, but not for the dimension of Activity. We conclude that, at least in poetic language, extreme values of acoustic features of vowels are a significant predictor for the emotional tone of a text.
Highlights
IntroductionInterest in the relation between sound and meaning in human language dates back more than 2,000 years to the Greek philosopher Plato (ca. 360 BC) and has since been discussed by many renowned figures, such as Lomonosov (1748), Locke (1690), Leibniz (1765), Humboldt (1836), Jespersen (1922), and Sapir (1929) (for reviews of the history of research on sound iconicity, see, e.g., Allott, 1995; Jakobson & Waugh, 2002; Kjetsaa, 1974; Magnus, 2001; Nuckolls, 1999)
Interest in the relation between sound and meaning in human language dates back more than 2,000 years to the Greek philosopher Plato and has since been discussed by many renowned figures, such as Lomonosov (1748), Locke (1690), Leibniz (1765), Humboldt (1836), Jespersen (1922), and Sapir (1929)
The results showed that inclusion of random slopes for each participant did not result in a significant improvement (Table 2)
Summary
Interest in the relation between sound and meaning in human language dates back more than 2,000 years to the Greek philosopher Plato (ca. 360 BC) and has since been discussed by many renowned figures, such as Lomonosov (1748), Locke (1690), Leibniz (1765), Humboldt (1836), Jespersen (1922), and Sapir (1929) (for reviews of the history of research on sound iconicity, see, e.g., Allott, 1995; Jakobson & Waugh, 2002; Kjetsaa, 1974; Magnus, 2001; Nuckolls, 1999). The empirical research of this topic began in the early 20th century and has recently gained momentum (for reviews, see Akita, 2009; Hinton, Nichols, & Ohala, 1994; Lockwood & Dingemanse, 2015; Monaghan, Shillcock, Christiansen, & Kirby, 2014; Perniss, Thompson, & Vigliocco, 2010; Schmidtke, Conrad, & Jacobs, 2014; Sidhu & Pexman, 2018). There is still no consistently used terminology for different kinds of phonosemantic relations. Dingemanse et al further distinguish between different subcategories of iconicity. According to this terminology, our definition of sound iconicity is closest to what they refer to as relative or diagrammatic iconicity Our definition of sound iconicity is closest to what they refer to as relative or diagrammatic iconicity (Dingemanse et al, 2015, p. 606)
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