Onomatopoeia (Figurative Language)

Onomatopoeia

The term onomatopoeia is such a daunting word that students almost always immediately assume that it must be a terribly difficult and complex technical term describing a linguistic and literary phenomenon that only the trained elite could hope to comprehend. However, nothing could be further from the truth, and once students understand what this large and difficult-to-spell word actually means, it usually becomes a favorite device, and provides easy points on essays and exams. It is one of the easiest "sound effects" to identify, and even children use the device on a regular basis, as it is a mainstay of nursery rhymes and children's songs.

Onomatopoeia occurs when the sound of a word attempts to emulate or at least give the impression of the sound of the thing it describes. The most obvious examples of this phenomenon occur all the time, even in comic books and jokes. When you see the word "bang!" or "pow!" you are looking at an example of onomatopoeia. Both words are an attempt to render in human language the sounds of explosion or impact. The exclamation points that usually follow such words give us a clue to this; after all, when you are telling a story to your friends that features an explosion you witnessed, it is highly unlikely that you will say "bang" in an understated and quiet manner. It is far more likely that you will say bang in a way that makes it stand out from the volume of the rest of the story, and probably even include some hand gestures to indicate the power of the event. It is obvious that the word bang does not really do justice to the sound of an explosion, no matter how small, but it does remind us of the right sound, and by saying it with increased stress, the sound of the word conveys its meaning well.

Some more subtle examples of onomatopoeia can occur in alliterated groups of words, as was briefly mentioned in a previous article on alliteration. Read the following sentence aloud and think for a moment about what sounds stand out and what impressions those sounds have on you: "The silent snake slithered slowly, searching stealthily." The repeated s sound that begins most of the words in the example sentence calls attention to itself through a high level of repetition. The sound makes the sentence more interesting on its own, but if we consider the content of the sentence, the alliterated s sound takes on an even greater significance. The sentence is about the silent slithering of a snake, and it is well known that snakes produce a sound that we most often render as a hissing sssssss. Snake characters in cartoons and movies, for example, usually speak with highly exaggerated s sounds, making them seem more snakelike even as they take on human characteristics and speech. So, the repeated s sounds reinforce the snake's presence in the sentence, and the description becomes more vivid through the use of onomatopoeia emulating the sound of the snake.

Taking this example even further, we can also see that the snake's motion is both secret and silent, which calls to mind another common example of onomatopoeia. When we desire someone to be quiet, or to keep something a secret, we often put our finger to our lips and say "shh," indicating that we want the person to remain silent. Because we are dealing with silence and secrecy in the example sentence, the s serves the dual role of reminding us of the sounds of the snake, but also of the silence and secrecy of his motion. Indeed, the sound the snake makes and the word "shh" are very similar, and through alliteration we are able to see the two concepts "snake" and "silence" combined in a way that perfectly describes the situation described in the sentence.