A Secret Vice by J. R. R. Tolkien

Author:J. R. R. Tolkien [Tolkien, J.R.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART II

‘Essay on Phonetic Symbolism’

This essay (MS Tolkien 24, folios 3–7 and 9) was written in blue ink on eight leaves of ‘Oxford paper’ torn out from examination booklets and then folded in the middle to form a mini-booklet of half the dimensions of the original. Although it is impossible to be certain, it appears as though the essay was written in one sitting: the same ink is used throughout, and all emendations look contemporary.

Although there are a number of themes and ideas that this essay shares with ‘A Secret Vice’, its main topic is different and it is ostensibly an independent work by Tolkien. It may be that his first idea for a paper for the Johnson Society was on the topic of phonetic symbolism, which he later abandoned, choosing instead the more self-reflective and personal subject of language invention. Another possibility is that Tolkien stopped in the middle of composing ‘A Secret Vice’ and began writing this separate essay to address some of the ideas that were related to, but not central in, his paper. In our notes we cross-reference shared ideas between the two essays, so that the reader can easily see how Tolkien briefly sketched main concepts in one essay that he then explored more fully in the other.

Phonetic Symbolism1: What is meant? I don’t know. What do I mean? That may appear connected with two things which are not the same – i.e. are clearly not (wholly symbolic):

(a) onomatopoeia2 (b) national and individual phonetic predilection (of which more later). Onomatopoeia is not in essence ‘symbolic’. In essence or rather in rudest form it means imitating physical sounds with organs of speech (sometimes and by some persons this can be accomplished with a very great acoustic verisimilitude). But ‘phonetic symbolism’ cannot be discussed without allusion to onomatopoeia. If a ‘symbolic’ feeling really exists it must largely owe its origin to the refinement and of onomatopoeia. Also an element that is not mere imitation but is ‘symbolic’ comes in this: (a) the sound-imit noise-imitation becomes a word for something that is not only a noise, though it is associated with one (wind, merriment, dr waterfall, cow)

(b) ‘phonetic predilection’ comes in, and the ‘imitation-noise’ is a mere sketch or suggestion of the original, and its phonetic form is made to conform to this phonetic predilection of the language. The onomatopoeia is thus again removed a stage further from its purely ‘echoic’ basis, and can become one of the sources of a ‘linguistic feeling’ – a readiness to associate notions with sound-groups (to make words). Thus a language not possessing b cannot imitate in the language (apart from the individual efforts of an animal imitator) the cry of sheep as baa.

I will use Phonetic Symbolism therefore to mean the idea or belief or fact that certain combinations of sounds are more fitted to express certain notions than to express others: that certain groups of notions tend to be expressed (in all languages, or widely among languages) by words sound groups having certain phonetic elements.

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