The physics of phonetic symbolism
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Or rather, the phonetic symbolism of (an aspect of physics), as illustrated by a recent xkcd:
Mouseover title: "Even when you try to make nice, smooth ice cubes in a freezer, sometimes one of them will shoot out a random ice spike, which physicists ascribe to kiki conservation."
Wikipedia says that the bouba/kiki effect
…was first observed by Georgian psychologist Dimitri Uznadze in a 1924 paper ["Ein experimenteller Beitrag zum Problem der psychologischen Grundlagen der Namengebung"]. He conducted an experiment with 10 participants who were given a list with nonsense words, shown six drawings for five seconds each, then instructed to pick a name for the drawing from the list of given words.
Aleksandra Ćwiek et al., "The bouba/kiki effect is robust across cultures and writing systems", 2022, gives this version of the history:
The cited papers are the 1929 and 1947 editions of Köhler's Gestalt Psychology, and Ramachandran and Hubbard's 2001 paper "Synaesthesia — a window into perception, thought and language".
In any case, the topic and the bouba/kiki name have been a PR success. Google Scholar finds 2580 papers via a search for "bouba kiki effect",
A few relevant LLOG posts:
"Ask Language Log: Sounds and Meanings", 3/9/2008
"Waza waza", 4/20/2008
"Phonetic marketing", 10/23/2010
"Response to Jasmin and Casasanto's response to me", 3/17/2012
"Sinitic ideophones", 5/14/2022
David Marjanović said,
December 19, 2024 @ 9:18 am
The effect is real and widespread, but it does have exceptions. This open-access paper goes into detail.
Also, I don't think it has anything to do with synesthesia. I don't have synesthesia, but the effect works on me.
Gregory Kusnick said,
December 19, 2024 @ 12:00 pm
Having never heard of the bouba/kiki effect before, I was imagining Bouba and Kiki as the protagonists of some trendy sitcom that had escaped my notice.
Cervantes said,
December 19, 2024 @ 12:15 pm
Note that the right side of the kiki is a K, and the right side of the Bouba is a B.
Just sayin'.
Philip Taylor said,
December 19, 2024 @ 1:00 pm
It would be interesting to know whether the phenomenon can be replicated with speakers of non-alphabetic-based languages such as Chinese. In other words, are speakers of alphabetic languages influenced (at least in part) by the shapes of the words "bouba" and "kiki", or are all who "correctly" match the words with the shapes influenced primarily by the sounds of the words ?
David L said,
December 19, 2024 @ 1:24 pm
I thought there was going to be some connection to BourbakiM/a>.
David L said,
December 19, 2024 @ 1:26 pm
Mistyped the linkie-poo but it works anyway
Yves Rehbein said,
December 19, 2024 @ 2:11 pm
@Cervantes, experiments have controled for latter shape by testing different writing systems. The effect is still significant. The source provided by @MYL says as much in the title.
Conversely, B (beta) descents from a fair square for Semitic bait "house" if my information is correct, though I am partial to Egyptian bn "place" symbolized basically (!) by a foot. K (kappa) on the other hand (!) is understood to mean "hand", perhaps not universaly accepted, which resembles the Bouba ink blot very well.
In conclusion, we need to study architecture. Howw many tents, reed huts or so-called bl-ock-house-s are quadrilateral in contrast to how many concrete bomb shelters are round?
Bob Ladd said,
December 19, 2024 @ 2:14 pm
Philip Taylor – There's some evidence that letter shape makes a difference (an easily google-able 2017 paper by Cuskley et al.) but the title of the article quoted in the main post, by Ćwiek et al., says that the effect "is robust" across writing systems. It is not hard to imagine how both those statements could be true.
Jonathan Smith said,
December 19, 2024 @ 2:35 pm
Yeah all languages Chinese included feature statistically significant sound-symbolic associations including some whose universality seems to require a neurological explanation — nothing to do with writing (except secondarily — see the comment by Cervantes.) This is small-s synaesthesia we might say as opposed to the neurological condition. Re: exceptions, yes de Saussure was after all not totally wrong about the arbitrariness of the sign.
Jason M said,
December 21, 2024 @ 9:52 am
I don’t know about “kiki”, but many of us in medicine would associate the swollen “bulbous” shape with “bouba” because of the Latin “ būbō” (from Greek βουβών) meaning swelling, as in bubonic plague.
Also, the 12-year old me could not avoid the fact that the rounder shapes are far more like boobs than the kiki shape.