Onomatopoeia in Discourse: A Relevance-Theoretic Lexical Pragmatic Approach

While there is no doubt that onomatopoeias are considered one of the linguistic universals, these phonetic components have received less attention in research. The limited studies conducted have either focused on defining onomatopoeias and their formal and structural characteristics or investigated their semantic aspects within the framework of semantics and sound-symbolism approach, assuming a systematic relationship between the form and meaning of onomatopoeias. In this study, seeing that onomatopoeia may convey different meanings in context, onomatopoeic words are deemed as pragmatic phenomena, and an effort has been made to analyze Persian onomatopoeia based on the relevance-theoretic lexical pragmatic approach in order to demonstrate what content these linguistic elements encode in discourse. The data examined in this research has been extracted from the Dictionary of onomatopoeia in Persian, and the analyses reveal that onomatopoeias do not always convey their predetermined linguistic meanings; rather, their meanings need to be retrieved in the context of discourse. In other words, as the analyses show, interpreting onomatopoeic elements and reaching the speaker’s intended meaning by using onomatopoeias in discourse requires triggering an ad hoc concept construction process. The output of the process, i.e., an ad hoc concept formed by considering context and other components of utterance and in searching for relevance, is accompanied by broadening and/or narrowing the linguistic meaning of onomatopoeias.
Onomatopoeias, despite being recognized as one of the linguistic universals (Bredin, 1996), have received relatively little attention in both descriptive grammars and linguistic studies (Tamori & Schourup, 1999, as cited in Körtvélyessy & Štekauer, 2024, p. 1). The literature on onomatopoeias, particularly in Persian, remains limited. This lack of attention is reflected in the absence of a universally agreed-upon definition of onomatopoeias. While it is widely recognized that onomatopoeias imitate natural sounds, there is no consensus on what exactly this description encompasses. Typically, the definition includes direct sound imitations, often referred to as primary onomatopoeias (Körtvélyessy, 2020; Laing, 2019), but excludes secondary onomatopoeias (cf. Bolinger, 1991; Kadooka, 2005). This has led some researchers to either describe the formal and structural features of onomatopoeias (e.g., Laing, 2019; Mahmoudi Bakhtiari, 2024) or categorize these elements based on their functions (e.g., Dingemanse & Akita, 2016; Hinton et al., 1995).
In addition to the lack of consensus on the nature and types of onomatopoeias, the meaning of onomatopoeic words poses another complexity. While often taken for granted, the semantic interpretation of onomatopoeias has been less explored, particularly in Persian. Some semantic studies of onomatopoeic words have explored how morphological patterns contribute to their meanings (Ebrahimsharifi, 2023; Gandomkar & Mesgari, 2021), while others (e.g., Akita, 2013; Kita, 1997; Tsujimura, 2001) have addressed the semantic interpretation of onomatopoeias, arguing that their meanings are often ambiguous and difficult to define, thus classifying them as polysemous elements capable of conveying a range of meanings. Alongside the semantic aspects of onomatopoeia, their semiotic features have been explored in some studies. These studies have discussed the iconicity of onomatopoeias from the perspective of sound symbolism approach, which posits a systematic link between form and meaning of onomatopoeic words (e.g., Flyxe, 2002; Kadooka, 2005; Mesgari & Gandomkar, 2023). In contrast to the above-mentioned formal and semantic studies, a few researchers (Sasamoto, 2019, 2021; Sasamoto & Jackson, 2016) have examined onomatopoeias from a pragmatic perspective, emphasizing the context-dependent nature of their meanings.
Given that Persian onomatopoeias have not yet been examined from a pragmatic perspective, this study aims to address the question of what exactly onomatopoeias encode in context and whether they have predetermined meanings or if they can convey different meanings in discourse. Following Körtvélyessy & Štekauer’s (2024) definition of onomatopoeias as “simple, underived, uninflected, and conventionalized words based on the direct imitation of sounds of the extra-linguistic reality” (p. 3), this research investigates the contextual meanings of Persian onomatopoeias within the framework of Relevance-Theoretic Lexical Pragmatics (Carston, 2002, 2010; Wilson, 2004; Wilson & Carston, 2007).
Theoretical Framework
The present study focuses on Persian onomatopoeias, analyzing their contextual meanings from the viewpoint of Relevance-Theoretic Lexical Pragmatics (Carston, 2010; Wilson, 2003; Wilson & Carston, 2007). Generally, lexical pragmatic approach seeks to explain how the meanings of words, which are linguistically specified, are adjusted and modulated in context (Carston, 2002, 2010). The Relevance-Theoretic Lexical Pragmatic approach—being based on the Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986)—maintains that the determination of the speaker’s intended meaning largely depends on pragmatic inferential mechanisms. Thus, the meaning of utterances and linguistic encodings cannot be fully captured by decoding alone but rather through pragmatic processes in the search for relevance. Understanding words in linguistic interaction involves an ad hoc concept construction process, constrained by the listener’s expectations of relevance. The output of this process, i.e., the ad hoc concept, is inferentially derived in context and may be more general and/or more specific than the encoded concept (Carston, 2010). Thus, the process of constructing ad hoc concepts may involve lexical broadening and/or narrowing in various directions and to varying degrees. Lexical narrowing and broadening are triggered in the search for relevance and stop when relevance expectations are satisfied.
Method
In this study, to compile a corpus of Persian onomatopoeias, the Dictionary of onomatopoeia in Persian (Vahidian Kamyar, 1996) was consulted, and a list of onomatopoeias was extracted manually. As a next step, by googling the collected onomatopoeias, the use of them in sentences was carefully examined, and the paragraphs containing the sentences were recorded to access the specific context in which the onomatopoeias were used. Finally, the collected samples were analyzed from the viewpoint of Relevance-Theoretic Lexical Pragmatics.
Results
The analyses reveal that onomatopoeias convey different meanings in various contexts. For example, the onomatopoeia [pet-pet], which refers to the sound of an oil lamp when it is running out of oil (Vahidian Kamyar, 1996), can, in different contexts, signify the sound of an oil lamp, an engine stalling, or even the concept of death. More specifically, while in some cases, the onomatopoeia [pet-pet] imitates a repetitive sound produced by an oil lamp running out of oil or a car engine that is stalling, in other cases, this onomatopoeia is used metaphorically to refer to a person dying. That is, the concept of [pet-pet] is no longer an imitation of an oil lamp sound but undergoes metaphorical lexical broadening through an ad hoc concept formation process. The output of this process is the ad hoc concept *pet-pet, which describes the manner of a person’s death.
Other examples, such as “tɑp,” “dʒez-dʒez,” “dɑrɑmb-o-doromb,” “xeʃ-xeʃ,” and “tɑlɑp,” also demonstrate that onomatopoeias convey diverse meanings in different contexts. These semantic variations can be accounted for based on the process of constructing ad hoc concepts and lexical narrowing and broadening proposed in Relevance-Theoretic Lexical Pragmatics.
Conclusion
The analysis of Persian onomatopoeic elements within Relevance-Theoretic Lexical Pragmatics reveals that onomatopoeias do not always convey a literal, encoded meaning that imitates a natural sound, rather sometimes their interpretation requires going beyond the linguistic meaning to arrive at a context-dependent meaning. This process can be explained using the concepts proposed in Relevance-Theoretic Lexical Pragmatics. In specific, the different meanings conveyed by onomatopoeias in different contexts can be accounted for based on the construction of ad hoc concepts, which arise out of lexical broadening and/or narrowing of the linguistic encoded meanings in discourse.
Ethical Considerations
Not applicable
Funding
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Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.