engleski

The Magic of Sound: Phonostylistic Approach to Verbal Charms

The question of sound-content relationship belongs to one of the oldest theoretical problems of Western philosophy, linguistics and literary theory, with its origins in Plato’s dialogue Cratylus. Content is seen as primary and active in all theories of poetry, but sound, as the other participant in the relationship, remains controversial. Following the model that considers both sound and content as primary and active in poetry, this paper focuses on sound-content relationship in verbal charms, seen as one of the five primary rhetorical genres (with counting-out rhymes, tongue-twisters, blessings and curses) along the sound-content continuum. Genres gravitating towards the sound dominance pole can be termed as phonosemantic (counting-out rhymes and tongue-twisters) and the genres gravitating towards the content dominance pole can be termed as pragmasemantic (blessings and curses). According to the proposed theoretical model, verbal charms are considered a transitory genre because they include the poetical and functional traits of both subgenres. On the one hand they employ rhythmic parallelisms, nonsense words and different types of repetition, which is the characteristic of phonosemantic genres ; however, on the other hand verbal charms use many expressions connected with the direct communication effect (the invocation of authority, analogies with the hagiographic experiences, direct addressing of the evil force and its negative qualification), and this feature relates verbal charms to curses and blessings. The analysis of sound patterns and instances of phonetic symbolism in Croatian verbal charms followed by comparison of these features in prototypical phonosemantic genres shows structural similarities between counting- out rhymes and verbal charms. Although phonostylistic approach alone cannot exactly position verbal charms on the sound-content continuum, its insights are crucial for recognizing the importance of sound in verbal magic.

blessings, counting-out rhymes, curses, phonostylistics, rhetorical genres, sound-content relationship, sound patterns, sound symbolism, tongue-twisters, verbal charm, verbal magic

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