Topic five "tool" summary
In this topic we have learned about phonemic patterns like alliteration,
assonance and rhyme and how they can be used to foreground parts of poems
and link parts together meaningfully (via the 'parallelism rule').
We have also learned that although the sounds of language are usually
arbitrary, they can sometimes be used sound symbolically - this is when
the sounds in the words are appropriate to the meaning indicated by those
words.
Sound symbolism includes onomatopoeia, but can involve other kinds of
appropriateness (e.g. large vs. small, long vs. short) and it usually
involves a perceived equivalence between the way in which sounds are physically
produced in the mouth and the idea represented (e.g. large objects and
long, open vowels).
But remember that phonemic arbitrariness is still much more common than
sound symbolism.
For more on sound patterning and sound symbolism, have a look at the
reading.
|
