![]() ![]() In Japanese, mimetics are not only fairly common, but constitute an open class, and other language groups include ideophones and expressives, which are similar in nature (see Imai, Kita, Nagumo, & Okada, 2008 Nuckolls, 1999). At one extreme, onomatopoeia represents the most direct sound to meaning link. Sound symbolic effects likely occur on a continuum and vary across languages in their prevalence. Such an assumption challenges traditional notions that the morpheme is the smallest unit that conveys meaning and suggests that, in some cases, individual phonemes or phonemic combinations might communicate meaning directly.Īccording to sound symbolism theory, sounds (e.g., phonemes, phonetic features) are directly involved in conveying meaning (Nuckolls, 1999 Sapir, 1929). Although onomatopoeic words are relatively rare, especially in Anglo-Saxon languages, they suggest that in some cases the relationship between sound and meaning may not always be arbitrary. One notable exception to this general rule is in the case of onomatopoeia, where the sound of a word conveys its real-world referent, as in zoom or buzz. ![]() For example, the/ʃ/ sound can be found in many words ( sheet, ship, show, sharp), but none of these words share meaning. Thus, the phonemes a morpheme is composed of are arbitrarily related to one another (Ohala, Hinton, & Nichols, 1994). In traditional linguistic theory, the morpheme is the unit in language that conveys meaning, and individual phonemes serve a primarily contrastive function (i.e., they discriminate between similar morphemes). Ultimately, words are a combination of sounds or phonemes within a particular language. This work supports the use of sound symbolism in the creation of effective brand names and provides tools for those creating these names in a competitive marketing world.Ī single word can be the most powerful tool of any author, poet, or advertiser. Brand names that adhered to sound symbolism “rules” were more memorable. Additionally, we examined whether sound symbolism could enhance memory for nonword-definition pairs. In the present study, we extended upon the results of this previous work by using a set of novel nonword stimuli with considerable variability and a more continuous size scale for participant size judgment. To our knowledge, the extent to which sound symbolic properties might affect the memorability of potential brand names has yet to be directly examined. However, this research has been limited by stimulus sets with definite categorical boundaries (e.g., Aveyard, 2012 Westbury, 2005) which do not accurately reflect the variability inherent in naturally occurring language and the common use of a forced choice task to obtain size judgments (i.e., large or small e.g., Klink, 2000, 2009 Sapir, 1929). The use of sound symbolism to create names that “fit” well with certain products has been a topic of interest in marketing research (Klink, 2000, 2009). In the creation of new brand names companies often have two main goals: to create a name that conveys some characteristic or information about the product and is easily remembered by consumers. This work has implications for the creation of brand names and how to create brand names that not only convey desired product characteristics, but also are memorable for consumers. Together, these results suggest that definitions that are sound symbolically congruent with a nonword are more memorable than incongruent definition-nonword pairings. In a final free association study, the possibility that plosive/back vowel and fricative/front vowel nonwords elicit sound symbolic size effects due to mediation from word neighbors was ruled out. When the participant-generated definitions were re-paired with other nonwords, this mnemonic advantage was reduced, although still reliable. Definitions paired with nonwords that matched the size and participant-generated meanings were recalled better than those that did not match. In Experiment 2, participants studied sound symbolic congruent and incongruent nonword and participant-generated definition pairings. Nonwords composed of fricative/front vowels were rated as smaller than those composed of plosive/back vowels. In Experiments 1A and 1B, participants rated the size of the 100 nonwords and provided definitions to them as if they were products. To examine the role of sound symbolic effects on processing and memory for nonwords, we developed a novel set of 100 nonwords to convey largeness (nonwords containing plosive consonants and back vowels) and smallness (nonwords containing fricative consonants and front vowels). ![]() According to sound symbolism theory, individual sounds or clusters of sounds can convey meaning. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |