Onomatopoeia

688 Words2 Pages

Onomatopoeia

Because of its special status symbolizing sound, onomatopoeia has the

distinction of being the only aspect of English where there is an

intrinsic connection between the language and the ‘real world’. It is

well known that the connection between words and their referents is

arbitrary; house is no more appropriate than mansion (French) or casa

(Spanish). Onomatopoeic words, however, may have a physical connection

with their referents; the sound of wind is created by air moving

through a restricted passage and this description is equally valid for

the fricative consonants which may be used to represent the wind in a

poetic context:

I lay in an agony of imagination as the wind

Limped up the stairs and puffed on the landings,

Snuffled through floorboards from the foundations, …

(P. Redgrove, Old House)

The use of conventional onomatopoeia in modern poetry is not

remarkable in itself, although it may stand out from the surrounding

text, as in He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped or He dipped

contented oars, and sighed, and slept. These lines from The Death-Bed

by Siegfried Sassoon use the onomatopoeic words moaned and sighed in a

straightforward way. The parallelism of the structure in these two

lines, however, highlights the progression from action (swallowed,

dipped) through involuntary sounds (moaned, sighed) to insensibility (dropped,

slept). This pattern, as well as pointing out similarities, emphasizes

the difference in the two events; the first is an uncomfortable

blackout to escape from the pain of his wound. The soldier’s continued

state of semi-consciousness is portrayed in the run-on li...

... middle of paper ...

...en their combined meaning

would disappear.

Other groups of sounds are also used to build up an onomatopoeic

effect. The soft sound of explosion heard from a distance, for

example, is evoked by the onomatopoeic word hoots and is echoed by

sibilants in these lines form Dulce et Decorum Est (Owens):

deaf even to the hoots

Of gas shells dropping softly behind.

In her poem Morning Song, Sylvia Plath makes effective use of the

voiceless fricative, /Ø/, to suggest the almost imperceptible

breathing of a new baby:

All night your moth-breath

Flickers among the flat pink roses.

Summary:

Words which echo the sound the word refers to are onomatopoeic. They

are often words which appeal to children, such as moo, neigh, baa.

More mature onomatopoeic words in English include clap, jingle, thud,

etc.

Open Document