What’s in a villain’s name?: Sound symbolic values of voiced obstruents and bilabial consonants

• Ryoko Uno ^[1] ; Kazuko Shinohara ^[1] ; Yuta Hosokawa ^[1] ; Naho Atsumi ^[1] ; Gakuji Kumagai ^[2] ; Shigeto Kawahara ^[3]
  1. [1] Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology

     Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology

     Japón

     
  2. [2] Meikai University

     Meikai University

     Minuma-ku, Japón

     
  3. [3] Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies

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• Localización: Review of cognitive linguistics, ISSN 1877-9751, Vol. 18, Nº. 2 (December 2020), 2020, págs. 428-457
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper reports two case studies of sound symbolism using the naturalistic name corpora of characters from Disney and Pokémon. Building upon previous studies of sound symbolism, we tested two hypotheses: (1) voiced obstruents, which are generally associated with negative images, are favored in villainous characters’ names, while (2) bilabial consonants, which are symbolically associated with cuteness, are disfavored in such names. The results show that these tendencies hold in our corpora, suggesting that a concept that is as complex as “villain” can be signaled via sound symbolism. Theoretical implications for cognitive linguistics based on our results are discussed.