Looking for Iconicity in Attic Oratory: Four Quantitative Case Studies

Abstract

Abstract:This article investigates whether Attic orators use prosodic and phonological effects to convey meaning (iconicity). Four hypotheses are explored: 1) heavy syllables tend to occur more often at period boundaries than within the sentence; 2) heavy syllables convey solemnity of tone and, in narrative, low dynamicity; 3) clustering of unvoiced consonants correlates with unpleasantness of tone or content; 4) alliteration is used when the author wishes to draw particular attention to the argument. Quantitative analyses for these hypotheses yield few positive results, so that we should be sceptical concerning the importance of iconicity in Attic rhetoric.