Unimodal and Cross-Modal Iconicity in Japanese Ideophones: A cognitive-semiotic approach
(2025) SPVR01 20251Master's Programme: Language and Linguistics
Cognitive Semiotics
- Abstract
- Drawing on concepts from cognitive semiotics and phenomenology, this thesis investigates how Japanese ideophones are perceived by non-speakers of Japanese, aiming to clarify key concepts such as iconicity, cross-modality/unimodality and the ultimately the nature of language as a semiotic system. Three research questions guided the study: (1) What is the relation between primary and secondary iconicity in the perception and interpretation of ideophones? (2) Which sensory modalities are perceived as more iconic? (3) To what extent does Japanese orthography influence perceptions of iconicity? An online experiment was conducted with non-Japanese participants using two tasks: (a) a two-alternative forced-choice Choosing Task, designed to elicit... (More)
- Drawing on concepts from cognitive semiotics and phenomenology, this thesis investigates how Japanese ideophones are perceived by non-speakers of Japanese, aiming to clarify key concepts such as iconicity, cross-modality/unimodality and the ultimately the nature of language as a semiotic system. Three research questions guided the study: (1) What is the relation between primary and secondary iconicity in the perception and interpretation of ideophones? (2) Which sensory modalities are perceived as more iconic? (3) To what extent does Japanese orthography influence perceptions of iconicity? An online experiment was conducted with non-Japanese participants using two tasks: (a) a two-alternative forced-choice Choosing Task, designed to elicit pre-reflective judgments of ideophone-meaning correspondences, and (b) an iconicity Rating Task, eliciting reflective evaluations of iconicity. The results show that participants “guessed” meanings above chance across modalities, confirming the roles of primary iconicity: being able to establish the meaning of unknown words (signs) beyond chance. Accuracy in the Choosing Task was highest for unimodal auditory ideophones, followed by cross-modal visual ideophones, while interoceptive items were less transparent. Interestingly, Rating Task diverged from this, suggesting that reflective judgments of vividness and expressivity do not align directly with pre-reflective ratings of iconicity. Orthographic manipulations (hiragana vs. katakana) produced no significant effects. These findings contribute to the debate on iconicity in language by demonstrating that pre-reflective and reflective levels of sign interpretation do not necessarily coincide, supporting a cognitive-semiotic account where primary and secondary iconicity operate in tandem, and pre-reflective judgements of often have higher validity than introspective ones. The study advances understanding of how iconicity functions in ideophones in Japanese, and more generally, thus clarifying the nature of language as a highly structured and conventional but non-arbitrary semiotic system. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9214474
- author
- Paulsson, Nils LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SPVR01 20251
- year
- 2025
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Japanese ideophones, cross-modal iconicity, sensory modality, orthography, sound symbolism, cognitive semiotics
- language
- English
- id
- 9214474
- date added to LUP
- 2025-10-27 09:35:50
- date last changed
- 2025-10-27 09:35:50
@misc{9214474,
abstract = {{Drawing on concepts from cognitive semiotics and phenomenology, this thesis investigates how Japanese ideophones are perceived by non-speakers of Japanese, aiming to clarify key concepts such as iconicity, cross-modality/unimodality and the ultimately the nature of language as a semiotic system. Three research questions guided the study: (1) What is the relation between primary and secondary iconicity in the perception and interpretation of ideophones? (2) Which sensory modalities are perceived as more iconic? (3) To what extent does Japanese orthography influence perceptions of iconicity? An online experiment was conducted with non-Japanese participants using two tasks: (a) a two-alternative forced-choice Choosing Task, designed to elicit pre-reflective judgments of ideophone-meaning correspondences, and (b) an iconicity Rating Task, eliciting reflective evaluations of iconicity. The results show that participants “guessed” meanings above chance across modalities, confirming the roles of primary iconicity: being able to establish the meaning of unknown words (signs) beyond chance. Accuracy in the Choosing Task was highest for unimodal auditory ideophones, followed by cross-modal visual ideophones, while interoceptive items were less transparent. Interestingly, Rating Task diverged from this, suggesting that reflective judgments of vividness and expressivity do not align directly with pre-reflective ratings of iconicity. Orthographic manipulations (hiragana vs. katakana) produced no significant effects. These findings contribute to the debate on iconicity in language by demonstrating that pre-reflective and reflective levels of sign interpretation do not necessarily coincide, supporting a cognitive-semiotic account where primary and secondary iconicity operate in tandem, and pre-reflective judgements of often have higher validity than introspective ones. The study advances understanding of how iconicity functions in ideophones in Japanese, and more generally, thus clarifying the nature of language as a highly structured and conventional but non-arbitrary semiotic system.}},
author = {{Paulsson, Nils}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Unimodal and Cross-Modal Iconicity in Japanese Ideophones: A cognitive-semiotic approach}},
year = {{2025}},
}