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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
The purpose of this chapter is essentially to spotlight the theories used as the bases of conducting this research. It is divided into three major sections,
namely the review of related studies, the theoretical description, and the theoretical framework section. The review of related studies was presented to give
a brief understanding related to previous relevant sound symbolism studies and to see what aspects make this research distinct from them. The theoretical
description provides a review of related studies and a number of closely relevant theories to this current research, namely sound symbolism and children songs
covering lullabies and play songs. Afterwards, the theoretical framework embraces the synthesis of all theories in the theoretical description to respond to
the research problems.
A. Review of Related Studies
In real life, the emergence of sound symbolism inevitably exists within humans‟ communication, both in oral and written forms. That fact invites the
interests of linguists and scholars from various backgrounds in understanding such phenomenon happening worldwide. One of many topics discussed mostly in
connection with sound symbolism is the application of using sound symbolism by children or children literature.
10 Pischedda 2011 conducted a research related to sound symbolism
entitled “Empirical Research on the Translation of Sound Symbolism from English to Italian: The case of the
Diary of a Wimpy Kid .” In his research, he
concerned the use of sound symbolism in applied linguistics, namely translation in a children book which was presented like a combination between comic and
novel. As an Italian, he investigated how an English children book which was translated into Italian version aff
ected the Italian readers‟ understanding towards its content, particularly sound symbolic words or phrases found in it. Therefore,
there were two methods employed in his research. First, he collected sound symbolic words or phrases in both versions. Second, he created a survey
containing a list of sound symbolic words or phrases found in English versions and asked their meanings or intended objects to the respondents. The result of his
study was that Italian readers were more familiar with sounds in the form of interjection than lexicalized ones. Furthermore, referring to his research result, his
respondents as the representatives of Italian readers have fitted with English sound symbolism version. It reflected that there was a fundamental problem in
translating sound symbolic words or phrases into Italian, i.e. linguistic matter. The researcher, influenced by the Pischedda‟s findings, also conducted a
research concerning the use of sound symbolic words in children literature. Unlike his research, this research lifted up English children songs, lullabies and play
songs in particular, as the research subjects. Further, the main focus in this research was to discover the categories of sound symbolism articulated by Hinton,
Nichols, and Ohala 1994 which might be found both in lullabies and play songs.
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