Sound Symbolism in Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Evidence of Dramatic Tension in the Interplay of Harsh and Gentle Sounds

Abstract

This paper addresses the role of meaningful sounds in poetic communication. A sound symbolic system (Whissell, 2000) was employed to score Shakespeare's 154 sonnets in terms of the percentage of Harsh (e.g., sh, oo, r, k, p) and Gentle (e.g., l, long e, th, eh, m) sounds in each line. Significant differences in the employment of emotional sounds across lines suggest that the structure of the sonnets is affectively dramatic. Four stages unfold across three quatrains and a couplet. These are the establishment of the problem (lines 1-4; excess of Harsh sounds), its enlargement (lines 5-8; greater dominance of Harsh sounds), multiple emotional reversals (lines 9-12; alternating ascendance of Gentle and Harsh sounds), and a closing coda (lines 13, 14; an echo of the sounds in the first quatrain). In the order of their publication, which has been touted as potentially autobiographical, the sonnets provide a picture of repeated swings between Gentle and Harsh emotional extremes. Individual sonnets critically recognized for their distinctive emotional tone display the appropriate preponderance of Gentle or Harsh sounds.

Emotional Sound Symbolism and the Volta in Shakespearean and Petrarchan Sonnets

“…It has been acknowledged that further sonnets of both types (Shakespearean and Petrarchan) need to be studied before any final conclusions can be reached. Whissell (2017) has noted a possible problem with the pronunciation and phonetic transcription of older texts. There is evidence that certain words are pronounced differently in the 21st century than they were in the 16th and 17th, but there is also evidence of continuity in pronunciation, especially for the consonants in the Harsh and Gentle categories.…”

“…Approaching the issue of poetic appreciation from a different perspective, Skinner (1941) took a rigorous behavioural stance to the analysis of poetry which involved an examination of its sound patterns. Combining these viewpoints, Whissell (2017) identified the location of emotional turns in Shakespeare's sonnets on the basis of their sound patterns. This article aims to demonstrate that sounds (phonemes), which convey emotional information, are an important cue to poetic form especially for highly structured poems such as sonnets.…”

“…The definition of volta in terms of mood is recognized by Fuller (1972, p. 2) who speaks of voltas in terms of "a shift of thought or feeling" between one part of the poem and another. Whissell (2017) noted the presence of several voltas in Shakespeare's sonnets: she identified these on the basis of the changes in mood expressed by the sounds in the poetry. Sounds convey emotional messages (Whissell, 2000) and a turn in mood was observed when the predominance of Harsh sounds over Gentle ones changed abruptly between one sonnet line and the next.…”

Sound Predicts Meaning: Cross‐Modal Associations Between Formant Frequency and Emotional Tone in Stanzas

“…Compared to other areas of research on sound iconicity, the results from these studies provide a fairly ambiguous picture. Whereas a majority of the studies have reported significant relations between the emotional tone of texts and the relative occurrence of certain phonemes (Aryani, Conrad, & Jacobs, 2013; Auracher, Albers, Zhai, Gareeva, & Stavniychuk, 2010; Auracher, Scharinger, & Menninghaus, 2019; Fónagy, 1961; Whissell, 1999, 2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2011, 2016, 2017, 2018), other studies have found no such relations (Kraxenberger & Menninghaus, 2016; Miall, 2001). What is more, the results of the studies that did find significant sound‐iconic relations vary greatly and even seem to partially contradict each other (Tsur & Gafni, 2020).…”

Contiguity-based sound iconicity: The meaning of words resonates with phonetic properties of their immediate verbal contexts

“…Compared to the studies referred to above, these studies have yielded a less consistent picture. Some of them found a significant relation between the emotional content of texts and their phonetic structure [14, 16–18, 21, 60, 61], others have not [19, 20]. Moreover, the same phonetic characteristics have been attributed to different iconic meanings.…”