FONOSIMBOLIČNOST ONOMATOPEJA I UZVIKA U STRIPU BY CHANCE OR PROVIDENCE

Abstract

Sound symbolism represents the relationship between the meaning of words or phrases and the corresponding sound structure, and includes both onomatopoeic and mimetic expressions. Considering the formal characteristics of onomatopoeia that are fairly prolific in comics, following the structuralist assumptions of understanding linguistic reality, the linguistic sign or onomatopoeia in the system of comic books constitutes an onomatopoeme with concrete realizations (onomatops). The aim of this paper is to identify, describe, and classify onomatopoeia based on the description of the phonological structure and the details of the context that influence their formation. Based on the analysis of 138 examples of onomatopoeias and 34 examples of interjections from the selected corpus, three key onomatopoemes (MOISTURE, CLASH and MOVEMENT) are defined, which, in addition to individual specificities, share certain phonological and semantic features for creating cohesion and coherence in the narrative. The use of voiceless consonants (mostly plosives, but also fricatives and affricates) was used to associate with the intensity and sharpness of the sound. On the other hand, approximants emphasize the duration of a part of an action, yet it is the vocalic segment that will determine the overall duration. Interjections express similar traits as onomatopoeias, although they ought to be classified according to their semantic and pragmatic properties rather than phonological. Since the conclusions in this paper are limited due to the fact that only one comic book was considered, for a more general and far-reaching contribution to studying sound symbolism, expanding the corpus as well as making it more diverse remains the goals for future studies.