Sound Symbolism

Sound symbolism is a linguistic phenomenon whereby specific sounds are associated with certain concepts or meanings. For example, words with high front vowels (e.g. "bee" and "peek") commonly refer to small, round things and words with ‘p’ and ‘b’ appear to be distinguishable by their size and shape. Research into sound symbolism aims to understand how sounds influence our understanding and interpretation of language. This could be used to inform language learning, as well as for applications in communication, such as in design, marketing, and advertisement. It is also of interest to cognitive scientists, linguists, and psycholinguists for its implications for language production and perception. Sound symbolism has been shown to be powerful; it affects people’s impressions of words and can even influence their decisions.