CLINICAL EDITOR’S COMMENTS:
onomatopoeia, which is sound mimicking, we will instead use the word ideophone refers to words that depict any sensory domains including tactile, olfactory, vision, taste, hearing, and physiological reactions and cognitive states. Multisensory onomatopoeia words even have the tendency to evoke empathy from a listener (Akita, 2015).
There are several hypotheses as to why ideophones are more prevalent in some languages compared with others. One such hypothesis is animist culture (Akita, 2015). Animist cultures commonly believe in the spirit world, and they apply personhood and agency to non- human beings including some objects. Animist cultures tend to have languages that are abundant with ideophones. Interestingly, animism is a common belief in preschool age children. They give lifelike qualities, such as feelings and thoughts, to inanimate objects like a stuffed animal or bicycle or shoes. It does not seem to be a that children gain from using ideophones: (1) awareness of the sound and sequence characteristics of their language, (2) awareness that words have meaning, (3) awareness of the connections between sound and meaning unique to their language, and (4) awareness of the part of the word that has more meaning. These four factors are the big picture of a child’s language acquisition and represent a stepping stone to language development in the future.
Possible Therapeutic Functions of Ideophones
Scaffolding in Bottom-up Therapy From the recent research on neuroscience and trauma, we have learned that
lower-brain areas are often disorganized by trauma
experiences, and the higher brain areas that operate logic, rationales, and language will not function well until the lower-brain areas achieve some level of equilibrium (Gaskill, 2019). Therefore, when we work with clients with complex trauma history, we adopt more somatically-driven and body-based interventions, which is often sensory experience and speakers and listeners of ideophones often feel them in their bodies (Akita, 2015). It is interesting to note that the order of the implicational hierarchy, which explains that languages (starting with sounds) and inner feelings and cognitive states (McLean, 2021), is parallel to the brain structure. In their case study of behavior therapy with adult clients with anxiety disorders, Tanaka et al. (2015) encouraged them to use ideophones in order to help them express the symptomatic sensations which were often hard to bring into awareness. By having them focus their attention on the physiological sensations and express them with ideophones, hard-
Multisensory ideophones add vibrance, depth, and developmental support to play therapy.
a topic to discuss in therapy sessions. Ideophones bring our somato- experiences to our awareness, create sensory imagery, and allow for the vocalization of these senses in a way that creates consistency in experience, imagery, and expression. Thus, ideophones may act as a scaffolding mechanism for a client to connect their lower brain experiences with their higher brain experiences.
Sound Symbolism As play therapists we often witness children’s masterful use of symbolism in their play when they express and process their inner experiences. Symbolic play compensates for the limited vocabulary that children have and makes something complex or abstract more concrete and emotionally digestible for children. Symbolic play also creates psychological distance and often provides a sense of safety One of the characteristics of ideophones is sound symbolism. Sound symbolism is a characteristic in which a listener naturally associates a certain sound with a certain meaning. The impression or sensory reactions one may experience when they hear the ideophone is due to this sound symbolism. Sound symbolism has universality (Asano a round shape regardless of our linguistic background. This is due to sound symbolism. Children often skillfully use sound symbolism and may be able to share the sensory experience of the word with the child because of sound symbolism.
Mindfulness Ideophones are depictions rather than descriptions. They depict sensory imagery from not only the external world but also our inner worlds such as physiological reactions, kinesthetic sensations, and feelings (Dingemanse, 2012). The process of paying attention to what is going on in our inner world, how it is impacting our senses, and bringing it to our consciousness so that we can utter it as ideophone is akin to the process of engaging in mindfulness. Mindfulness means
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