Showing posts with label How the Sounds of Words Affect Emotion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How the Sounds of Words Affect Emotion. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

How the Sounds of Words Affect Emotion


by DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills

Our ancestors struggled to develop language and communication skills. I imagine the beginnings of those grunts were emotionally motivated. 
  • Ugh! A dinosaur is coming.
  • Ah. The scent of a spring morning.
  • Mmm. The food smells good.
  • Ohhhh. I hurt
Over time, words grew out of necessity and a need to communicate effectively. Sounds and meanings were emotionally connected then and are today. The sound of a word doesn’t necessarily tell us what it means, but we can project to the listener what it means by the way it affects us emotionally. For example, a mother tells her baby who doesn’t have a grasp of language “No.” The emotion the mother uses shows her baby the negative connotation of the word.