Synesthetic Metaphor

Since the emergence of cognitive linguistics in the1980s, metaphor has been regarded as one of thefundamental areas of language and cognition.Nevertheless, few empirical studies have focused onsynesthetic metaphors, which involve transfer fromone sensory domain to another. This study provides atheoretical and empirical analysis of synestheticmetaphors for sound such as bright sound and sharpvoice. Corpus analysis of literary works shows thatsynesthetic metaphors are similar in English andJapanese. However, some differences exist in thetypes of linguistic expressions that accompany themetaphors (e.g., onomatopoeia) and the aspects ofsounds that are described (e.g., sound source). Basedon the experimental data involving three differenttypes of sounds - environmental sounds, music, andspeech - it becomes evident that synestheticmetaphors are related to the physical aspects ofstimuli as well as cultural tendencies. The studybrings together research findings on metaphor andsound from wide-ranging fields, and should be usefulto metaphor researchers in linguistics, philosophy,literature, music theory, anthropology, psychology,and neuroscience.

Autorentext

Ph.D. in Linguistics, Georgetown University. Part-time Lecturer in English and Linguistics at International Christian University and Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo, Japan.

Klappentext
Since the emergence of cognitive linguistics in the 1980s, metaphor has been regarded as one of the fundamental areas of language and cognition. Nevertheless, few empirical studies have focused on synesthetic metaphors, which involve transfer from one sensory domain to another. This study provides a theoretical and empirical analysis of synesthetic metaphors for sound such as bright sound and sharp voice. Corpus analysis of literary works shows that synesthetic metaphors are similar in English and Japanese. However, some differences exist in the types of linguistic expressions that accompany the metaphors (e.g., onomatopoeia) and the aspects of sounds that are described (e.g., sound source). Based on the experimental data involving three different types of sounds - environmental sounds, music, and speech - it becomes evident that synesthetic metaphors are related to the physical aspects of stimuli as well as cultural tendencies. The study brings together research findings on metaphor and sound from wide-ranging fields, and should be useful to metaphor researchers in linguistics, philosophy, literature, music theory, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience.