Ideophones and lexicalized iconicity in language (Kurz-AG, with Kathryn Barnes)
Published in DGfS 2023, 2023
This was a Kurz-AG organized by Kathryn Barnes and me during the DGfS 2023.
This workshop takes ideophones as a starting point to investigate lexicalized or conventionalized iconic forms in language from an interdisciplinary perspective. The study of iconic forms within and across languages is crucial because their amount within a language varies greatly; for example, European languages tend to have much fewer ideophones than languages such as Japanese. Per the iconic treadmill hypothesis (cf. Flaksmann 2017), languages, however, have a need for iconicity – if European languages are lacking in ideophones, are there other iconic forms and enrichments that may be fulfilling this role instead? Thus far, linguistic research into European languages has often focused on written language, however, many iconic forms occur in the spoken medium, meaning they may have remained obscured from our sight. Furthermore, a renewed focus on different communicative settings could reveal more about the role of iconicity in language. As an example, ideophones are often used performatively, particularly in spoken narratives and in combination with other iconic phenomena, which has been said to enhance listener involvement in these narratives. In addition, the perception of iconicity is also dependent on multiple factors such as language experience and social and cultural conventions and as such, many iconic forms, including ideophones, are not crosslinguistically transparent. Nevertheless, a unified account of iconicity is desirable and in order to achieve this, all aspects of iconic phenomena, including their cognitive, social and cultural basis must be considered. Thus, the key goals of this workshop are threefold: firstly, to raise awareness of and discuss the variety of lexicalized iconicity in spoken language; secondly, to compare the role of lexicalized iconicity crosslinguistically and in different communication settings; and lastly, to facilitate an interdisciplinary exchange on lexicalized iconicity. Potential research topics could include the varying roles of different iconic forms crosslinguistically, the interaction of ideophones and other iconic phenomena, the use and effect of ideophones and iconicity in performances and the language specific nature of iconicity and perceptions of iconicity. We would welcome abstracts not only on ideophones, but also on onomatopoeia, phonesthemes, expressive and iconic morphology as well as phonology, and other, similar iconic phenomena from a range of disciplines, such as formal linguistics, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, psychology, and sign language linguistics.
Blasi, D. E., Wichmann, S., Hammarström, H., Stadler, P. F., & Christiansen, M. H. (2016). Sound–meaning association biases evidenced across thousands of languages. In A. Cutler, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (No.39; Vol. 113, Number 39, pp. 10818–10823). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1605782113.
Flaksman, M. (2017). Iconic treadmill hypothesis. In A. Zirker, M. Bauer, O. Fischer, & C. Ljungberg, Dimensions of Iconicity (pp. 15–38). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/ill.15.02fl.