The Phono-semantic Bias: A Subjectivity in Linguistics

Yesterday, I was reading a few example abstracts on the website for the Linguistic Society of America. The reason why I was there is because I was considering submitting one for their upcoming conference in Pittsburgh. Despite all of the examples having obvious counter-arguments, there was one that made me literally chuckle. This one. At least it was good until the end - when they started talking about "glorping." It got me thinking. Why do I think this is so hilarious? Well, "glorping" sounds like a pretty funny word to me, but it wasn't that. It was the fact that the researchers were attempting to use it as a neutral, unbiased term for some action being described on a television screen. What action that is, I/we may never know. What action do you think it might be? Well, certainly it's one that can be displayed on a screen. So it's a tangible, physical, noticeable action.


Using English language conventions, we can extract a base word "glorp" which is undeniably the source of hilarity - at least for me. To me, "glorp" makes an interesting sound when I say it. It makes me want to think that "glorp" is some sort of onomatopoeia. It almost seems like a clumsy word. Maybe it's similar to "stumble" but flailingly. Or maybe it has something to do with speed - being slow sounding. If I heard that someone was glorping, I wouldn't assume they were moving very quickly. Or maybe it has something to do with some sort of awkward, alien-like march in which the participant makes an official "glorping" march noise on each step. It could be - and very well might be - the fact that it's not even a real word that makes it all the more entertaining and silly. Regardless, I wouldn't expect to hear this word in the context of writing a TPS report, in giving an official declaration or speech, and certainly wouldn't expect to hear it as part of a compliment. Why?


Well, in doing a bit of dictionary (including Scrabble) research, I was able to find a few words with similar sounds in them: namely the [orp] sound. I will assume all related words (i.e. torpid, torpor) and not include obsolete words.


gorp: a mixture of dried fruit and nuts, often with seeds and other high-calorie foods such as chocolate, eaten as a snack food, originally by walkers and campers. (OED)


torpid: benumbed; deprived or devoid of the power of motion or feeling; in which activity, animation, or development is suspended; dormant. (OED)


dorper: a prevalent and flourishing breed of sheep primary used for meat; some have black heads. (Wikipedia)


corpus: from Latin; a technical term referring to the "body"; used in various professional fields including law, medicine, writing, language, and the arts (Wikipedia)


dorp: a (Dutch) village; formerly more or less naturalized in sense: Village, THORP. In South Africa, a small town. (OED)


So far, we have one word that slightly matches my instincts: torpid. Nonethesless, none of them are verbs like "glorp." However, to be completely honest, I don't use "torpid" in daily conversation and had to be reminded of its existence while searching. So this word barely influenced my judgments regarding the word "glorp." Maybe it's the other half of the word that makes a difference: the [gl] sound. I will, however, refrain from listing all of the words I find as there are evidently hundreds. In fact, I will only list words which come to mind (seeing as this is obviously very subjective).


glop: obsolete; to swallow greedily (OED)


gloop: can be a wide variety of things (thanks to Urban Dictionary... goes and pukes)


glue: the sticky stuff


So now that I have a series of grotesque images floating around in my mind, I'm going to stop searching and just make my point. It seems that the actual phoneme segments in the fake word, "glorp," do NOT directly influence its assumed meaning. Instead, I hypothesize that there is a much more complex explanation to this phenomena (and I do believe there is one).


I hypothesize two separate conclusions:


(1) Intuitive Hypothesis: It is the combination of an uncommon sound of English with another sound or group of sounds which create a sort of "bigger picture" for the meaning of the fake word. By "bigger picture" I mean there is a completely fabricated definition which is influenced by the unique combination of sounds and some sort of psychological analysis.


(2) Non-intuitive Hypothesis: There is a word association using the words outside the perceiver's known vocabulary that combines many different similar words together so intricately that it is difficult, if not impossible, to decipher any or all of them. (Unlikely, but possible)


So I was wondering: Is it worth it to explore this further? Would anyone like to join me? Should I submit an abstract to the LSA for their conference in January?


I would actually be surprised if anyone read this let alone responded to it.