Sounds in Contact: The American Bird Sounds of a German-American Worker Poet and New Empirical Methods of Comparing Literary Sounds

Abstract

"onomatopoeia has long been overlooked in the fields of comparative literature and global literature studies.... It is not by accident that onomatopoeia is typical for nursery rhymes, whose purpose is to motivate children to imitate them and, step by step, learn to speak. The claim that onomatopoeia in literary works are international expressions and understandable for a global audience, however, seems naïve. What if a connection between the onomatopoeic word and its meaning (the “original” acoustic source) failed, or what if such a word were only understood in a specific social or local context? We will argue that onomatopoeic words require careful interpretation along the lines of their sound contexts, be they local or global or even entirely fantastic and invented only by a single author. Consequently, we will focus not only on written onomatopoeic words but also on their acoustic representation, reference, and meaning."