Sound Symbolism in Spencer’s Evolutionary Thought

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 3 analyzes the theory of sound symbolism (mimetic uses of sounds to represent things) that undergirds Spencer’s theory of music and language origins. For Spencer, music is a development from vocal expression and specifically from impassioned speech, as consolidated by his dictum: “All music is originally vocal.” In Spencer’s essays on language—such as “Progress: Its Law and Cause” (1881) and Philosophy of Style (1884)—he argues that language began as sonic imitations of the phenomenal world. This chapter locates Spencer within a long history of imaginative speculations about sound symbolism and the so-called well-designedness of music and language—alongside Plato, Gottfried Leibniz, John Locke, and Max Müller, among others—and critically examines these theories. The chapter concludes with an extended engagement with Gary Tomlinson’s evolutionary theory of music, which implicitly demonstrates a way to avoid the pitfalls of Spencerian sound symbolism.