Sunday, October 25, 2009

Onomatopoeia: Rings a Bell?

What is an onomatopoeia? It is a literary device that involves words that, actually, mimics or sounds like the real thing. Common occurrences of onomatopoeias include animal noises, such as "oink" or "meow" or "roar". Onomatopoeias are not universally the same across all languages, and there are variations of words. Examples of onomatopoeia include:

Common: hiccup, zoom, bang, beep, and splash

Animals: quack, bark, cluck, chirp, cheep, and roar

Machines: honk-honk, beep, vroom, screech and zap

So, when the dogs go woof, cats go meow and frogs croak what do you do? When your fingers are stiff, don’t you crack them to release the fluid in the joints? Your chiropractor will crack your vertebrae as part of subluxation. Accountants crunch numbers, which is different in sound to the bite our teeth make on a crispy apple.

In electronic trading, it has been about blips. Traditionally, on the Net we use point and click. Now, we can ping or tweet each other. With Microsoft’s new BING, I wonder if it was an attempt to use a non-onomatopoeia word to make it easy to remember?

Relevance to leaders: In the area of influence, one’s conversation or presentation carries more impact when we include onomatopoeia. It makes the communication carry more audio-density. It is analogous to putting music to lyrics, which is akin to reciting rap, or poetry with a melody. In sales, it enhances how we are able to pitch the sale. How you sound, and what you say has relevance to your ability to influence.

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