Phonetics and Phonology Commons^™

What’S In A Name? Sound Symbolism And Coffee Shops, Claire Anderson

Linguistics Senior Research Projects

This study explores the relationship between sound symbolism and coffee shop names. Specifically, phonetic qualities in coffee shop names have crossmodal associations with other sensory experiences such as taste, sight, sound, and touch. Previous studies show a strong association between product or brand name and consumer preference; therefore, a study of coffee shop names is worthwhile in expanding the corpus of sound symbolism knowledge. A phonetic analysis of top-rated coffee shops in the United States, paired with a survey, shows that a balance of stops and smoother phonemes (fricatives, nasals, laterals, etc.), as well as a mixture of front and …