September 14, 2016

September 14, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my sixth response to “Sound, Symbolism, and Swearing; an Affect Induction Perspective” (2010) by Yardy. Parker’s work (2008) demonstrates that there is “a cross-linguistic pattern supporting his sonority theory” and Peperkamp’s work (2016) demonstrates that in every language the pattern of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) exists. Moreover, these two universal response classes are perfectly explained by the sonority theory. 

“The measure that consistently correlated best with sonority was intensity or amplitude (loudness) with a very strong Spearman correlation of 0.91 (Parker, 2002, Parker 2008). It is unequivocally clear that SVB only contains “consonants high in sonority” which “tend to have a tonal and soothing pattern”, while NVB “contains consonants low in sonority” which “tend to have a broadband harsh pattern.”

I witness the far-reaching consequences of a “tonal, soothing pattern” versus a “broadband, harsh pattern” in each of my mental health clients and in each of the students in the psychology classes I teach. I totally agree with the researchers Owren and Rendal (1997), who suggest that “words used in different contexts might be chosen based in part on the affective impact of their phonemic impact as predicted by the Affect Induction approach to animal communication.” In other words (pun intended), agreeable words sound different from disagreeable words. 

The great importance of Yardy’s work (2010) is that it demonstrates that “consistent word form expectations” might “not be limited to nonsense images and words but ultimately affect real word usage, at least in some natural contexts.” This can be easily verified when we talk with each other and explore the SVB/NVB distinction. Our words are not arbitrary and how they sound always has inherent meaning.

The reader should not be surprised to find out that “The swearwords and profanity category contained significantly more harsh sounding consonants than lullabies and carols.” The same can be said about the NVB and SVB category. Based on Yardy’s work, I hypothesize that speakers produce high amounts of “expletives and epithets” in NVB, but hardly swear at all in SVB. I endorse Yardy’s powerful suggestion that “the Affect Induction model may have explanatory power not only for animal communication but also for human communication.” 

I have had various wonderful long skype conversations with Brandon Yardy. As expected, we immediately connected. Our conversation flowed with SVB and we felt tremendously reinforced by each other.

When we consider the SVB/NVB distinction, we agree the AIM applies to animals and to humans. We can verify this while we speak. Only if we are in non-aversive situations will we be able to have SVB, but when we find ourselves in hostile, threatening or intimidating circumstances, we will engage in NVB. We are clueless about the extent to which we, like other animals, produce sounds “with acoustic properties” that “influence or manipulate a targeted listener’s affective state.” 

Human communication, like animal communication, is for the most part NOT about “relaying information from one animal to another, as purported by classical ethology” (Owren & Rendall, 1997). Therefore, the prominent information processing model didn’t and couldn’t produce an integrated understanding of animal communication. Moreover, it is now evident that our misunderstanding of animal communication was based on our misunderstanding about our own human communication. 

It is catastrophic that “Just as classical ethologist viewed animal communication as an exchange of information between among senders and receivers, linguists have traditionally viewed human language as being exclusively purposed to convey information to other individuals” (Scott-Phillips, 2006). To our own detriment we continue to select high rates of NVB and justify this with explanatory fictions. If “language is selected to improve conveyance of information by increasing understandability (Pinker & Bloom, 1990), we would produce higher rates of SVB!