Unconventional spoken iconicity follows a conventional structure: Evidence from demonstrations

Abstract

Some languages have more forms of conventional spoken iconicity than others. Japanese, for example, has more ideophones than English. So how do speakers of a language with limited semantic categories of ideophones depict percepts? One possibility is demonstrations: unconventional, yet depictive, discourse. Demonstrations follow quotatives (e.g., I was like ___) and perform referents as opposed to describing them. In English, a language with arguably restricted sets of ideophones, speakers may enact/create demonstrations using their hands, voice, and body. This paper examines which visual and spoken components are vital to comprehending demonstrations in English with features from Güldemann's (2008) observations: enacted verbal behaviour, non-linguistic vocal imitation, ideophones, and representational gesture. 28 videos containing demonstrations of 11 celebrities engaging in impromptu storytelling on USA talk shows were our critical stimuli. 145 native speakers completed forced multiple-choice judgement tasks to qualify each demonstration. To see which forms of visual and spoken communication contributed to comprehension, videos were presented in visual (muted), audio (pixelated and darkened), and audio–visual (left as is) conditions. Our results show that if arbitrary speech (e.g., I was like I can't go over the ocean!) is in a demonstration, then it is vital to comprehension. The visual condition rendered these demonstrations uninterpretable. If sound imitations (e.g., I was like prfff!) or ideophones coupled with hand gesture (e.g., I was like yay! + hands opening and closing in unison) are in a demonstration, then the interpretability of that demonstration across our experimental conditions depends on whether its components (gesture, sound imitation) can unambiguously express meaning in isolation. These findings allow us to make several conjectures about the wellformedness of demonstrations. Our findings are in line with studies on enactments in deaf signed languages whereby the more unconventional a form of iconic depiction is, the more it requires conventional framing to be interpretable.