“Ooh! Ahh! Yay! Ouch! Ugh! Grrr!” We have all heard these
sounds before, and the second they hit our eardrums, we knew exactly what the
speaker was feeling. I have been quite curious about the interrelations between
sounds and emotions, and in this blog, I hope to bring up some interesting
points regarding the expression of emotions through sounds.
Have you ever noticed that when we produce expressive
sounds, we tend to use both standard phonemic sounds and non-phonemic ones? For
example, “ahhh!” and “oooh!” clearly consist of common phonemic sounds that
English speakers use on a regular basis. But what about the denti-alveolar
click [ǀ] we make to show disapproval or regret? Interestingly enough,
although not found in English, this sound is found in languages in Africa and
in the Danim language of Australia. But why do we make these atypical sounds? The
best reason I could come up with is that vocabulary in language is limited. We,
humans, are too mentally advanced to express all of our ideas and all of our
emotions with just the 250,000 words found in the English dictionary. We are
forced to use body movements, facial expressions, changes in intonation, and meaningful
sounds to express our thoughts. Sometimes, we must even resort to using unusual
sounds that are not found in our own language to transmit our feelings. Also, wordless
sounds can sometimes convey feelings much better than a simple statement. That
is, sighing when feeling sad and groaning while in pain are more meaningful
than saying “I am sad” or “I am in pain” and the same is true for laughing and
chuckling, when feeling positive emotions.
Our emotions are reflected by not only segments but also by
suprasegmental features of speech. In File 2.5, we learned that intonation, the
“pattern of pitch movements across a stretch of speech,” greatly influences the
meaning of a sentence (e.g. the rising and falling intonations at the end of a
sentence change its functional type), but what about the emotions being conveyed?
Intuitively, it seems obvious that the variation in high and low notes in a
speaker’s utterances reflects his or her emotions. This brings me to emotional
prosody, the study of perception of feelings transmitted through speech. A very
interesting study dissected an over-the-phone dialogue between the protagonists
Jerry and Rod (played by Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr. respectively) in the
movie Jerry Maguire (1996). The
conversation occurred when Jerry, a sports manager, feared that he might lose
his last client, Rod, a famous football player. The duration, intensity, and
frequency of Jerry’s voice were measured, and it was concluded that the amount
of stress felt by Jerry throughout the dialogue had a positive correlation with
the increase in duration, rise of intensity, and frequency of his words. This
may not be too surprising as over a century ago, Charles Darwin noted in his
book, The Descent of Man, that “even monkeys
express strong feelings in different tones – anger and impatience by
low, – fear and pain by high notes.”
Ultimately, expression of emotions is a vital aspect of
language. The different sounds we produce and the different ways and contexts in
which we produce them all play essential roles in the messages we attempt to
communicate.
I agree that it is true that sounds can express emotions. However, I don't think we need sounds to express emotions because we don't have enough words to do so. It seems like there are always some words that can be used to express our emotions. Our own personal feelings of sadness do not feel more sad to us if we groan or if we say the phrase 'I'm sad'. I think the distinction between using language to express emotions and using body languages and sounds is in how others perceive our emotions. In the example of chuckling at a joke, laughing gives others the impression that you truly found the joke funny. In contrast, saying "that was funny" in response to a joke wouldn't make the joke teller think that you actually agreed with what you were saying. As the person experiencing the emotion, it doesn't matter to you whether you verbally affirm that you find the joke funny or physically laugh. Thus, using sounds and body language occurs not because we need these features to supplement a limited vocabulary. Rather, these features are used to demonstrate our emotions to others. They make others believe that the emotions we are experiencing are genuine.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that you bring up, “Ouch” or “umm” as sounds used to express emotions. We use the sound “ouch” to signify pain. But most of the world uses something that leads into an [i] sound, more along the lines of, “ai” or “oi.” “Umm” has similar cultural ties; for us the expression means, “I’m thinking” or “I don’t know.” In Japanese, however, the same thought might be expressed with something akin to [εtoʊ]. I’d argue, though, that these sounds are more tied to language and culture than people give them credit for. In the same way I learned language, I learned the meanings of these emotion-expressing sounds, and because of this, they vary language-by-language and culture-by-culture.
ReplyDeleteMy initial reaction to your ideas was a variation of your idea that words cannot express certain emotions as well as sounds that are not necessarily words, like Ow and Ouch. It seemed to make sense to me that perhaps these sounds, being as reflexive and unconscious as they often are, could be considered as "lower level" than language, and remnants of sub-language communication. However, as Griffin's comment pointed out, these sounds are not universal and vary by culture/language, which seems to suggest that it is on the same level as language.
ReplyDeleteEven with this evidence, I think a distinction should still be made. Perhaps the fact that these sounds do not fit into typical word categories, such as nouns, adjectives, etc., could lead us in the right direction. If they do haven a category, I would imagine its called an interjection, or something of the sort. Surely you don't say, "I was ow-ing earlier" or " That is very ooooooh!". From this, I think it's safe to say that they do play a specific role in communication, such as an expression of emotion that is more sincere, as Elana suggested. These words and sounds don't fit into sentences like other words, therefore making them appear less thought-out and more instinctive. Maybe, rather than providing evidence of genuine feelings, they simply have developed as a way in which to express common feelings in the quickest way possible. It very well may serve a combination of purposes! Regardless, they certainly do hold a special place in communication.
I’d like to follow this very interesting blog discussion up with some additional questions I thought of while reading.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I think it would be interesting to look at the evolution of these sounds (like “ow” and “ouch”) over time. For example, are the sounds we use to express emotion changing in the same way that language changes? Are there additions to our vocabulary of these types of words? Are there differences across time in the same way that modern English looks vastly different from old or middle English?
Another interesting path of inquiry would be to think about how these sounds are learned. For example, would a baby with no exposure to spoken language still express emotion through sounds or is the case more similar to general language learning where exposure to language is a necessary component?
Interesting post. Reading it made me curious to another aspect of having these sounds/words, that being their purpose. Obviously they communicate something to anyone who hears it, but as I've done before, and I'm sure others have as well, these sounds are also produced when no one is around. Stubbing your toe in your room when no one is there may result in a "Ow!" (or maybe something a bit more vulgar), so what purpose does the sound serve here? Is it just a habit that we've developed, or does it help us to tolerate or deal with the pain. It may seem silly, but I feel like dropping an f-bomb after hurting myself makes it seem less painful sometimes. The main thing I'm interested in is the non-communicative aspects of such sounds - if they even exist on an empirical level.
ReplyDeleteDylan I don't think the point you raise is silly at all. Though I can't definitively say why, I believe these types of verbal outbursts absolutely help people deal with emotion. I don't think they would be as common if they did not. As for whether or not they're a language, I think it goes back to what you choose to consider a requirement for language. If you feel that the requirement should be based off whether or not the expression is communicative then an "owwwww" in my mind should count, however if you choose to get caught up in language needing to fit into a part of speech then perhaps not. Again I guess the difference in our opinion is how we define what is or what isn't communicative. I think an "ahhhhh" definitely convey's a feeling and thus is communicative, but do others disagree?
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough there is an evolutionary explanation for why certain sounds have emotional counterparts. The theory is that our primate ancestors lived outside of eyeshot but within earshot of eachother and as such used sounds to signal food, prey and predators. As a result we have been inculcated with responses to certain pitches. Another interesting evolutionary reaction is the one we have to a baby crying. Baby's cry in high pitches which travel further and are more robust than low-tones. This could be an evolutionary trait of infants given that they are generally defenseless. Baby crying also makes adults edgy and nervous despite themselves. So my theory is that the correlations between sounds and emotions are primarily evolutionary in nature and origin.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post here. I agree that sounds sometimes convey more meaning than words themselves can, but I think this is a cultural phenomenon, rather than an attribute language. I find it more plausible that expressions such as “ahh”, “ooh”, and “ugh” are mostly a sort of reflex response that becomes more easily activated with age. Our natural tendency is to shout when in pain. As our vocabulary increases, we learn more words that can express the same ideas that “ahh,” “ooh”, and “ugh” do, but our tendency to use other words in place of these is minimal. I think it’s plausible that these basic sounds are simple enough that the threshold for their activation is “lowered” even after we learn more words, so these basic components of language become more instinctual than expressing the same idea with greater variety. These grunts and shouts become our default response to many things, in addition to pain and wonder, in a way that has a cultural meaning rather than a linguistic one.
ReplyDeleteThis post brought up incredibly insightful points about the difference between speech and language. It made me further question the way we communicate and the different modes of communication used to illicit alternate responses. For example, there is a distinction between communication meant to be persuasive or expository, and this difference usually stems more from hand gestures than language variation. Further, I am reminded of my mock trial days in middle school when we would take the stand as fake witnesses to a court case. Our instructor always told us that the jury’s opinion of you is based roughly 15% on your words. The rest is gathered from facial expressions, hand movements, and eye contact. This is a very interesting and probably controversial topic within linguistics, as the entire field is based on the study of language.
ReplyDeleteI do not believe that we use certain types of sound to express meaning because we lack the required vocabulary. What is interesting, however, is why we default to using certain expressive sounds rather than using the appropriate words that we do have available to us. Perhaps it is just convention: we have been inculcated to respond in a certain way to certain stimuli by copying those around us. Or perhaps in certain instances our response is automatic and not well thought out, and as such we do not access the appropriate words to describe the sensation, instead we go into a repository of simple reactionary sounds.
ReplyDeleteI think an interesting point of further exploration would be to perform some experiment whereby participants must fully articulate their thoughts in response to certain stimuli, and see if it is possible after a period of time to replace words like "ow" with a proper response.
I find myself agreeing with the stance that many other commentators have highlighted: while I don't think the lack of lexicon is the reason we have these sounds, these sounds are imperative to our understanding of language, nonetheless. Similarly to many, I take an evolutionary approach to explain why these sounds are part of our every day speech. Simply by studying other primates, one can realize that simple utterances form an integral part in everyday survival. Several species of monkeys use verbal cues to signal the presence of predators or gain an advantage when it comes to sexual selection. I find that these rudimentary and instinctual utterances are also rooted in humans evolutionary history. These simple sounds also came to encompass the way we express emotions and these neural pathways are still hardwired in our modern brains and that is why they form such an integral part of our communication.
ReplyDeleteMany of the sounds, at least the ones mentioned in this blog post,we make to indicate some corresponding emotion are definitely within the scope of our entire lexicon. However, I think the fact that we make sounds is one of the primitive natures of human beings. Although intellectually the most advanced, we still perform similar biological functions as other animals do, including making sounds to express emotions,especially in physically demanding situations such as in sexual activities or when experiencing excruciating pain. As others have noted, these instinctive sounds are evolutionary, as evident in the fact that these sounds are never taught and are exactly the same across all ages and across the globe. Eventually, evolutionary processes may cause our brain to evoke a different set of sounds to express emotions. Or perhaps, we may even become insentient and completely grow out of them.
ReplyDelete