Linguistic synaesthesia

Synaesthesia in language consists in the combination of linguistic expressions referring to different sensory modalities, as in bitter voice. In this chapter, we first address the debate on the definition of synaesthesia, arguing that it is a type of metaphor. Next, we review research on preferences in synaesthetic sensory combinations; for instance, many studies show that in several languages hearing is very frequently a target of synaesthetic transfers (as in bitter voice) but rarely a source. Finally, we suggest that such strong cross-linguistic preferences as well as minor language-specific differences may be accounted for by a combination of perceptual, cultural and linguistic factors.