Onomatopoeia

GENERAL NOTES

The stylistic approach to the utterance is not confined to its struc­ture and sense. This is the way a word, a phrase or a sentence sounds. The sound of most words taken separately will have little or no aesthetic value. It is in combination with other words that a word may acquire a desired phonetic effect. The way a separate word sounds may produce a certain euphonic impression, but this is a matter of individual per­ception and feeling and therefore subjective. For instance, a certain English writer expresses the opinion that angina [aen'dsama], pneumonia [nju'mounia], and uvula ['ju:vjula] would make beautiful girl's names instead of what he calls lumps of names like Joan, Joyce and Maud".

Each of these sounds expresses a definite feeling or state of mind. Thus the sound [u:] generally expresses sorrow or seriousness; l I:] produces the feeling of joy and so on.

In human speech, different sounds have different meaning. To study the coordination of certain sounds with certain meanings, is to study language. There is an assumption that separate sounds awake certain ideas, perceptions, feelings, images.

Recent investigations have shown that "it is rash to deny the existence of universal, or widespread types of sound symbolism." In poetry we cannot help feeling that the arrangement of sounds carries a definite aesthetic function. Poetry is not entirely divorced from music. Such no­tions as harmony, euphony, rhythm and other sound phenomena undoubt­edly are not indifferent to the general effect produced by a verbal chain. Poetry, unlike prose, is meant to be read out loud and any oral performance of a message inevitably involves definite musical (in the broad sense of the word) interpretation.

Now let us see what phonetic SDs secure this musical function.

0 n o m a t o p o e i a (1) is a combination of speech-sounds which aims at imitating sounds produced in nature (wind, sea, thunder, etc), by things (machines or tools, etc), by people (sighing, laughter, patter of feet, etc) and by animals. Combinations of speech sounds of this type will inevitably be associated with whatever produces the natural sound. Therefore the relation between onomatopoeia and the phenomenon it is supposed to represent is one of metonymy.

There are two varieties of onomatopoeia: direct and indirect.

Direct onomatopoeia is contained in words that imitate na­tural sounds, as ding-dong, buzz, bang, cuckoo, tintinabulation, mew, ping-pong, roar.

These words have different degrees of imitative quality. Some of them immediately bring to mind whatever it is that produces the sound. Others require the exercise of a certain amount of imagination to de­cipher it.

Onomatopoetic words can be used in a transferred meaning, as for instance, ding-dong, which represents the sound of bells rung continu­ously, may mean 1) noisy, 2) strenuously contested.

a ding-dong struggle, a ding-dong go at something. In the following newspaper headline:

DING-DONG ROW OPENS ON BILL, both meanings are implied.

I n d i r e c t onomatopoeia is a combination of sounds the aim of which is to make the sound of the utterance an echo of its sense. It is sometimes called "echo-writing".

'And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain where the repetition of the sound [s] actually produces the sound of the rustling of the curtain.

Indirect onomatopoeia, unlike alliteration, demands some mention of what makes the sound, as rustling (of curtains). The same can be said of the sound [w] if it aims at reproducing, the sound of wind. The word wind must be mentioned, as in:

"Whenever the moon and stars are set,

Whenever the wind is high,

All night long in the dark and wet

A man goes riding by." (R. S. Stevenson) "-

Indirect onomatopoeia is sometimes very effectively used by re­peating words which themselves are not onomatopoetic:

"Silver bells... how they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle" and further

"To the tintinabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells—

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells."

Alongside obviously onomatopoetic words as tinkle, tintinabulation and jingling the word bells is drawn into the general music of the poem and begins to display onomatopoetic properties through the repetition.

Here is another example:

"Mostly he moved in urgent, precise, clipped movements— go, go, go— and talked the same way— staccato sentences."

The onomatopoetic effect is achieved by the repetition of the unonomatopoetic word 'go' the pronunciation of which is prompted by the word 'clipped', suggesting short, quick, abrupt motions. One seems even to hear the sound of his footsteps.

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