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Image/Text? Expanding Semiotics.
Nov. 4th, 2007 12:06 pmI stumbled across the following collection of images recently and was immediately reminded of a class discussion that took place in my Methodology seminar. The discussion touched on Ferdinand de Saussure's treatment of onomatopoeia in his Course in General Linguistics. He makes claims about onomatopoeia that, while possibly correct for Western languages, didn't strike me as being very true to the use of onomatopoeia in Japanese. In particular, he claims that such onomatopoeic words were "never organic elements of a linguistic system " and "far fewer than is generally believed" (69). Anyone who studies the Japanese language (and who has ever been frightened and subsequently ドキドキした, or had cause to ガンガン食べる their dinner) knows that both of those claims just do not apply. I brought up this instance to the class.
Cut forward a couple weeks to my discovery of the contemporary Japanese artist, Fukunaga Atsushi, who has recently begun a project of creating installation artworks that visually mimic various Japanese onomatopoeia. His work is so fascinating that I just had to share with everyone.
Fukunaga Atsushi 2007.
The link leads to an artist's statement where Fukunaga discusses, among other things, the emphasis of onomatopoeic words, through script differentiations, in Japanese manga and the significance of doing so. Additionally, if you click on the second icon from the top it takes you to a page for Fukunaga's recent Oto exhibition in Berlin. (Oto means "sound.") There you can view a number of examples of his onomatopoeia-inspired works by clicking on the assorted thumbnails. It's not a pipe, granted, but I think it's fascinating nonetheless.
Additionally, here's a wikipedia (yeah, I know) page about Japanese mimetic words.
Japanese Sound Symbolism.
It's cursory but fairly accurate, and it gives a very limited demonstration of the scope of the proliferation of Japanese onomatopoeia and mimetic words, which are practically countless and inserted very well indeed into the Japanese linguistic system.
( Edit: Click Here to view Fukunaga Atsushi's The Sounds of Japanese Imitation Words. )
Cut forward a couple weeks to my discovery of the contemporary Japanese artist, Fukunaga Atsushi, who has recently begun a project of creating installation artworks that visually mimic various Japanese onomatopoeia. His work is so fascinating that I just had to share with everyone.
Fukunaga Atsushi 2007.
The link leads to an artist's statement where Fukunaga discusses, among other things, the emphasis of onomatopoeic words, through script differentiations, in Japanese manga and the significance of doing so. Additionally, if you click on the second icon from the top it takes you to a page for Fukunaga's recent Oto exhibition in Berlin. (Oto means "sound.") There you can view a number of examples of his onomatopoeia-inspired works by clicking on the assorted thumbnails. It's not a pipe, granted, but I think it's fascinating nonetheless.
Additionally, here's a wikipedia (yeah, I know) page about Japanese mimetic words.
Japanese Sound Symbolism.
It's cursory but fairly accurate, and it gives a very limited demonstration of the scope of the proliferation of Japanese onomatopoeia and mimetic words, which are practically countless and inserted very well indeed into the Japanese linguistic system.
( Edit: Click Here to view Fukunaga Atsushi's The Sounds of Japanese Imitation Words. )
