Title :

The sound of taboo: Exploring a sound-meaning association in swear words of English and French

Author(s) :

Vallery, Robin [Auteur]
Lemmens, Maarten [Auteur]
Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163 [STL]

Journal title :

Array

Pages :

87-137

Publisher :

Elsevier

Publication date :

2021-12-31

ISSN :

2590-0056

HAL domain(s) :

Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Linguistique
Sciences cognitives/Linguistique

English abstract : [en]

Swear words of English and French, both real and fictional ones, significantly tend to contain the least sonorous consonants, compared to the rest of the lexicon. What can explain the overrepresentation of such sounds among ...
Show more >Swear words of English and French, both real and fictional ones, significantly tend to contain the least sonorous consonants, compared to the rest of the lexicon. What can explain the overrepresentation of such sounds among swear words? This might be a case of sound symbolism, when sounds are unconsciously associated with a meaning. We examine the pragmatic vs. semantic nature of the meaning involved, as well as two explanations in terms of iconicity (plosives may be associated with “violation of hearer’s space”, or unsonorous consonants may be associated with “aggression”). This unusual sound-meaning pairing would involve an emotional-contextual, non-truth-conditional meaning, and be powerful enough that it influences a strong sociolinguistic convention – which words are swear words and which ones are not – suggesting that sounds convey meaning in yet unsuspected ways.Show less >

Language :

Anglais

Popular science :

Non

Collections :

• Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163

Source :

Harvested from HAL