Have you ever looked into the above topic? If so, could you possibly share your findings, or provide references? I've been asked to submit a paper about "soundscapes" in a couple of months and I would like to focus on sound symbolism in journalistic English, with a specific view to economic and financial terminology. Any suggestions and/or comments are very welcome. Many thanks, Antonio.
For two decades I was a CNN business/financial/economic correspondent and presenter before I moved into education; I'm training to be a languages teacher. I'm not sure I can help as in television we obviously tend to avoid verbal 'soundscapes' as they cut across the imagery of the pictures. But in live TV moving pictures are becoming a rarity (stylistic issue -- another discussion) so journalists are defaulting to the same imagery as print, web or radio colleagues. Does that help? Charles
I'm not sure if this is imagery or not but on the podcast Lexicon Valley, they talked about the term "fiscal cliff" (I think the episode was called "down is up" or "up is good" or something like that). They mostly talked about metaphor and language, but there were some comments about how the word sounded, with the repeated "ih" vowel and all the fricatives.
When I think of "soundscapes" I think of a kind of storytelling in which the voices and the sounds of a place and time tell the story, without narration by a journalist. I am not sure if this is what you are talking about.
A different idea might be sounds as metaphors. For example, in financial reporting, we may talk about the "closing bell" and assume that people know what we mean. They probably will not actually hear the bell, but it is still referring to a sound as a description or metaphor.
Hi Michael,
thanks for your contribution.
Your "different idea" is what I meant for for my paper. I would like to focus on the relationship between sound-phoneme and concept in a word, and demonstrate that such relationship is authentic. I am sure this has much to do also with sound as a description or metaphor. But honestly, I feel like I'm groping in the dark as to where to find some references and (typical) examples from the language used in the press in particular - e.g. credit crunch, fiscal cliff (as above), spread, bailout, etc., which is why I asked the question.
Thank you again,
Antonio