[lit-ideas] Vedr: lit-ideas Digest V10 #243
- From: Torgeir Fjeld <torgeir_fjeld@xxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 09:12:03 +0000 (GMT)
More on digestive issus:
1. How do we distinguish "emotional meaning" from "word meaning"? Is meaning in
"emotional" hemisphere an alltogether separate language from the world of words
-- and, if that's the case, how on earth did the resarchers manage to translate
the "emotional" into plain Anglese?
(It says in tidbit that the "emonional" lingo is "quite independent" from the
"word" language.)
2. The idea of a "natural" language prior to cultural intervention is age old.
Only with de Saussure has linguistics established as inherent (to the
discipline) that meaning (which is to say language) is convention based (and
/not/ a natural aspect of word -- onomatopoetics nonwithstanding). A meaning
established "simply by virtue of their acoustic properties" would be prior to
enculturation?
3. Did the thrity-two adults (who were selected according to what
[randomization] procedure?) speech thirty two different languages? Or just
one?? If they all spake the same language was that shared with researcher(s)?
What effect would this languague situation have on the (peception of) natural
meaning to various sound (which may or may not have resemblede phonemes in
their first language)?
Gib's auf.
Mvh / Yours,
Torgeir Fjeld
Gdansk, Poland
Blogs: http://phatic.blogspot.com // http://norsketegn.blogspot.com
Web: http://independent.academia.edu/TorgeirFjeld
Den Torsdag, 31. oktober 2013 16.14 skrev FreeLists Mailing List Manager
<ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
lit-ideas Digest Wed, 30 Oct 2013 Volume: 10 Issue: 243
>
>In This Issue:
> [lit-ideas] Re: The Three Grices -- or Grice's Adventures in
> [lit-ideas] Size 9B
> [lit-ideas] Re: Size 9B
> [lit-ideas] Re: Size 9B
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
>Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 09:14:10 -0400 (EDT)
>Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Three Grices -- or Grice's Adventures in Popperlan
>
>Alleged 'inherent' (as opposed to what?) emotional (aesthetic?) quality of
>human (homo sapiens) 'speech' sounds (phonemes -- cfr. phone/phoneme and
>the definition of 'phoneme' as INVOLVING, per necessity 'meaning' or
>'semantic quality' -- It's the fact that 'put' differs in meaning from 'pot'
>that
>'u' and 'o' are different phonemes in English. They may be treated as the
>same 'sound' in a different 'idiolect'.
>
>We are discussing an experimental result which caught the interest (if it
>can be caught) of Phatic. The experimental result is excerpted below. It got
>D. Ritchie into tubing about words which are tinny and words which are
>woody, which was funny.
>
>
>In a message dated 10/29/2013 2:27:20 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
>donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
>Once this flaw is seen, the limits of their results becomes apparent - and
>it is apparent how problematic it is to think that they are anywhere near
>to demonstrating that the "emotional meaning" or "emotional quality" of
>wave-frequencies is a purely W1 affair (in terms of explanation), though they
>seem to think they are well on the road to showing this.
>
>---
>
>I was thinking that perhaps the authors should have used 'aesthetic' rather
>than 'emotional'. But there are other flaws, too. The idea that a puppy
>(or photograph thereof) is positive while a non-puppy is negative seems
>negative. On top of that, they are not saying that 100% of those who took the
>test reacted the way they should have if the result were 'analytic' (a
>priori). A similar result is cited regarding graduates in a Lancashire
>university
>who had to separate statements into 'analytic' or 'synthetic' and most
>failing ("Spring follows Winter").
>
>So, I would think that a philosopher should proceed differently.
>
>The propositions have to be made clearer. At one point the experimenters
>talk of their result as refuting the idea that words can be onomatopoetic,
>i.e. that there is nothing like an indexical sign, or a word what means that
>it means by the mere quality of its constituting phones. This seems
>simplistic.
>
>Ever since Plato's Cratylus, onomatopoeia has figured large in
>philosophical studies of language.
>
>There may be other flaws too.
>
>---- A Gricean or Popperian reading should proceed once the clarifications
>are made. Or not.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Speranza
>
>B. Myers-Schulz, M. Pujara, R. C. Wolf and M. Koenigs,
>"Inherent emotional quality of human speech sounds"
>Cognition and emotion, vol. 27 -- available at:
>http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23286242
>
>"The relationship between the meaning of a word and the letter strings of
>which it is comprised is usually thought to be arbitrary. That is, the
>meaning of a word is dictated by convention and the emotional tone of the
>speaker. Strip these away and the sounds of the letter groupings
>themselves -
>known as phonemes - are generally considered meaningless. At least that's
>been
>a popular view for some time. But now a study has been published that
>challenges this account. Blake Myers-Schulz and his colleagues show that
>the
>shift in sound from some phonemes to others carries emotional meaning of
>its
>own, quite independent from word meanings or tone of voice."
>
>"Human speech creates sound at different frequencies. Myers-Schulz and
>his
>team focused on the changes in certain frequency peaks in speech - known
>as
>formants - as nonsense words were spoken. Specifically, they divided
>nonsense words into those in which the first two formants went from low
>to high
>(e.g. bupaba, pafabi, mipaba) and those in which this sound shift was
>reversed, going high to low (e.g. dugada, tatoku, gadigu). They were
>matched on
>many other sound features, such as plosives, nasality, intonation and
>volume. Thirty-two adult participants were shown pairs of these nonsense
>words
>on a computer screen, one of which always went low to high, the other
>high
>to low (in terms of formant shifts). Together with the words, two
>pictures
>were shown, one positive, one negative (e.g. a cute puppy and a snarling
>dog). The participants' job was to allocate the two nonsense words to the
>two
>pictures in the way that seemed most appropriate. The key finding was
>that
>80 per cent of the time, they matched the word that had the low-high
>sound
>shift with the positive picture and the high-to-low word with the
>negative
>picture."
>
>"It was a similar story when 20 more adult participants performed the
>same
>task but with the words spoken by a computer programme rather than shown
>visually. In this case, they matched the low-to-high nonsense words with
>the
>positive pictures on 65 per cent of occasions - still far more often than
>you'd expect based on chance alone. The findings suggest that strings of
>phonemes (the sounds that comprise words) have an emotional quality of
>their
>own, quite separate from any word meaning or the tone or volume of an
>utterance. This emotional meaning is conveyed purely by the acoustic
>properties
>of the word as the sound frequencies change from one phoneme to the next.
>There could be intriguing real-life applications for this research in
>terms
>of marketing and PR because the implication is that some words convey
>positive emotion simply by virtue of their acoustic properties, above and
>beyond
>any literal word meaning. "Even in artistic contexts, such as film and
>literature, these acoustic principles could be applied to evoke a
>particular
>emotional subtext," the researchers said. "Indeed our data suggest that
>'Darth Vader' is an acoustically more appropriate name for an
>intergalactic
>miscreant than 'Barth Vaber'."
>
>Phatic's editorial:
>
>"Language isn't arbitrary, convention based after all". "A bit of
>numerological
>mysticism can do wonders for the academic branch known as Linguistic
>Patricide,
>innit?" phatic muttered. It was a dark and gloomy night at the No Holds
>Barred cafe in uptown Florida. "You've been reading the Digest again,
>'aven't
>ya," responded Beanieman despondently. phatic nodded, hesitantly. "Why
>it's
>apt - psycho-acoustically speaking - that Darth Vader wasn't called Barth
>
>Vaber""
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>From: cblists@xxxxxxxx
>Subject: [lit-ideas] Size 9B
>Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 22:25:00 +0100
>
>
>Today is the 75th anniversary of The Mercury Theatre on the Air's
>(in)famous broadcast of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, directed and narrated
>by Orson Welles. The ensuing panic is legendary.
>
>An interesting anecdote from the Wikipedia entry:
>
>"Many listeners sued the [CBS] network for 'mental anguish' and
>'personal injury'. All suits were dismissed, except for a claim for a
>pair of black men's shoes (size 9B) by a Massachusetts man, who spent
>his shoe money to escape the Martians. Welles insisted the man be paid."
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(radio)
>
>Chris Bruce,
>who wears a size 10, in
>Kiel, Germany
>--
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 21:59:46 +0000 (GMT)
>From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Size 9B
>
>"All suits were dismissed, except for a claim for a
>pair of black men's shoes"
>
>I know they were less enlightened times, but the idea that black men then had
>to have separate shoes is new to me. Even at the height of apartheid etc.
>
>Donal
>Ldn
>
>
>
>
>On Wednesday, 30 October 2013, 21:25, "cblists@xxxxxxxx" <cblists@xxxxxxxx>
>wrote:
>
>
>Today is the 75th anniversary of The Mercury Theatre on the Air's
>(in)famous broadcast of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, directed and narrated
>by Orson Welles. The ensuing panic is legendary.
>
>An interesting anecdote from the Wikipedia entry:
>
>"Many listeners sued the [CBS] network for 'mental anguish' and
>'personal injury'. All suits were dismissed, except for a claim for a
>pair of black men's shoes (size 9B) by a Massachusetts man, who spent
>his shoe money to escape the Martians. Welles insisted the man be paid."
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(radio)
>
>Chris Bruce,
>who wears a size 10, in
>Kiel, Germany
>
>--
>------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
>------------------------------
>
>From: David Ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Size 9B
>Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 15:26:46 -0700
>
>On Oct 30, 2013, at 2:59 PM, Donal McEvoy wrote:
>
>>
>> "All suits were dismissed, except for a claim for a
>> pair of black men's shoes"
>>
>> I know they were less enlightened times, but the idea that black men then
>> had to have separate shoes is new to me. Even at the height of apartheid etc.
>
>
>I'm not a lawyer but I will say that these kinds of negotiation often work
>best when you dismiss the suits and get real. Given his girth, Welles
>probably had not walked the statuary mile in the other man's shoes, which
>might possibly have invalidated the whole deal. What was probably needed in
>this instance were boots, which as you know often were made for walking.
>
>Obit R. Dicta
>Portland, Oregon
>
>------------------------------
>
>End of lit-ideas Digest V10 #243
>********************************
>
>
>
>
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