Arbitrariness of Language
“There is nothing red about the word red, and the word big is itself rather small.” (Cuskley, Simner, & Kirby)
Imagine that I said the word “red.” What would you first recall in your mind? Perhaps the color red will pop up in your head or any objects that are of that color such as an apple. However, if I said the word “bbal-gang,” what would you imagine? Unless you are Korean or someone who speaks Korean, it would be hard to recall anything. This word is actually the color red in Korean, and the reason why you had to perhaps search this word on the internet to understand the meaning is because language is acquired. So the color red was created for something which happened to be the color red we see today. Here is another example of the arbitrary link between sound and meaning in language from a study commonly known as the Bouba-kiki effect which was first found by Kohler in the 1920s.
For a brief overview, take a look at this video:
In a study by Ramachandran and Hubbard (2001), participants were asked to assign non-word names to abstract shapes. This was designed to investigate sound symbolism, a “potential for words to ‘naturally’ denote their meanings” (Cuskley, et al., 2017). Before I explain any further, please try naming these two objects: one being “Bouba” and the other being “Kiki.”
As you might have expected, it was shown that approximately 98% of participants named the round object on the left as “Bouba” and the spiky object on the right as “Kiki” (Cuskley, et al., 2017). According to the study, there is a tendency for us to “[match] properties inherent in the sound form of non-words” (Cuskley, et al., 2017). For instance, “Kiki” produces “sharp phonemic inflections” which is why we perhaps relate the spikiness of an object to kiki. Another theory states that there is an orthographic similarity between the shapes and the graphemes B and K as shown below:
To ensure that language plays a role in this effect, previous studies have been conducted to see if this effect applies to young children who do not yet speak a language. It was found that the Bouba-kiki effect didn’t apply to children under 6 years old (Maurer, D., Pathman, T., & Mondloch, C. J., 2006). Unfortunately, these participants’ literacy levels were not known. Maurer, et al (2006) have suggested that the children could have looked at the mouth of the experimenter to see the shape of their lips. When they saw rounder lip shape, they would have associated that with the round object that most people refer to as Bouba.
To further investigate phonological and orthographic influences, this current study by Cuskley, Simmer and Kirby (2017) conducted two experiments in total. In experiment one, 41 native English speakers were recruited from the University of Edinburgh community and were asked to complete a short pencil and paper task. Several consonant graphemes such as “gege” and “keke” were displayed in a booklet along with a spiky or round object. These graphemes were initially categorized as round or sharp based on the number of curved and straight lines they contained. After, they were asked to rate how well these words matched to an object shown using the Likert scale. The results showed that participants’ scales were rated higher when curved graphemes were shown with a round object instead of a spiky object, vice versa.
The second experiment examined “word-shape associations in an auditory task” in which 36 participants from the same region were paid to do a brief computer task (Cuskley, et al., 2017). The procedures were similar except that the non-words were pre-recorded, and participants were asked to view the objects on the screen with a sound to rate how the sounds of names well matched the objects. It was found that voicing had an impact on matching shapes and non-words. Specifically, round objects had a higher rating with voiced consonants whereas spiky objects had higher ratings with voiceless consonants.
Therefore, this study by Cuskley, Simmer and Kirby suggests that although there aren’t definite names given to an object, we instinctively know what kind of names they possess with the help of phonological and orthographic influences. And this makes languages less arbitrary.
The articles featured in this post:
Cuskley, C., Simner, J., & Kirby, S. (2017). Phonological and orthographic influences in the bouba–kiki effect. Psychological research, 81(1), 119–130.
Maurer, D., Pathman, T., & Mondloch, C. J. (2006). The shape of boubas: word–shape correspondences in toddlers and adults. Developmental Science, 9(3), 316–322
Ramachandran, V., & Hubbard, E. (2001). Synaesthesia: a window into perception, thought and language. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(1), 3–34.
