Gotta Name’em All: an Experimental Study on the Sound Symbolism of Pokémon Names in Brazilian Portuguese

Sound-symbolic patterns which relate to the perception of size were found to motivate the behavior of English and Japanese speakers in the naming of pre- and post-evolution Pokémon. The current study builds from this finding and investigates which sound-symbolic association speakers of Brazilian Por...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of psycholinguistic research 2020-10, Vol.49 (5), p.717-740
Main Authors: Godoy, Mahayana C., de Souza Filho, Neemias Silva, de Souza, Juliana G. Marques, França, Hális A. N., Kawahara, Shigeto
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Psycholinguistics
Psychology
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Summary:Sound-symbolic patterns which relate to the perception of size were found to motivate the behavior of English and Japanese speakers in the naming of pre- and post-evolution Pokémon. The current study builds from this finding and investigates which sound-symbolic association speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) employ to name Pokémon characters. Results from 3 experiments show that vowel quality, phonological length and voiced obstruents, usually used to signal differences in size, are used to signal differences in evolution; however, the effects of voiced obstruents are not identical to what was previously observed in the behavior of Japanese speakers. We argue that although there is a universal sound symbolism associated with these sounds and the perception of largeness, its manifestation differs cross-linguistically. To the best of our knowledge, this is one the first experimental research to investigate sound symbolism and the perception of size in BP.
ISSN:0090-6905
1573-6555
DOI:10.1007/s10936-019-09679-2