The Workshop on Ideophones in Use (WIU-2026) will take place on December 5-6, 2026 (Japan Standard Time [JST]). It is an online meeting co-hosted by Nagoya University, Japan, and York University, Canada.

WIU-2026 aims to deepen understanding of the role played by ideophones in language use by bringing together researchers from around the globe. The workshop focuses on identifying the characteristics of ideophones used in communication, writing, and verbal art.

We welcome papers on ideophones in use, especially those focusing on ideophones in less-studied languages or dialects, analyzed from a variety of theoretical and/or methodological perspectives.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Ideophones used in storytelling (e.g., Nuckolls 1996)

• Ideophones used in literary works (e.g., Mphande 1992; Barrett 2014)

• Ideophones used in songs, dirges, and requiems (e.g., Dingemanse 2009; Lundström and Svantesson 2025)

• Ideophones used in portraying soundscape (e.g., Tsujimura 2022)

• Ideophones used in food discourse (e.g., Szatrowski 2018; Sakamoto 2019: Ch. 5; Tsujimura 2023: Ch. 3)

• Ideophones used in conversation (e.g., Dingemanse 2011: Ch. 11; Akita 2015)

• Ideophones used in sport/dance instructions (e.g., Kataoka 2023: Ch.7; Yasui 2023)

• Ideophones used in social media (e.g., Van Hoey 2025a)

• Ideophones used in marketing and branding (e.g., Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2017; Sakamoto 2020)

• Ideophones used in naming (e.g., Mokhathi-Mbhele 2023)

• Ideophones used in medical offices (e.g., Akita 2025)

• Ideophones used in multimodal communication (e.g., Mihas 2013; Sakamoto 2019: Ch. 6; Gawne, Hildebrandt, and Styles 2025)

• Ideophones used in youth innovation (e.g., Cook, McGilly, and Case, 2024)

• Ideophones expressing particular semantic concepts, such as motion (e.g., Van Hoey 2025b; Zikmundová et al. 2025), tactility (e.g., Essegbey 2013), and color (e.g., Schaefer 1984) 

We expect a 20-minute time frame per presentation for a “live” delivery, but the format may be adjusted later to accommodate time zone differences.

Janis Nuckolls (Brigham Young University)

Important dates

• Abstract submission deadline: September 15, 2026 (JST)

• Notification of acceptance: September 30, 2026 (JST)

• Workshop dates: December 5-6, 2026 (JST)

• Kiyoko Toratani (York University)

• Kimi Akita (Nagoya University)

Contact: ktora [at] yorku.ca

• Akita, Kimi. 2015. Ideophones and reported discourse as depictive signs. Joint project on language & culture 2014: Theoretical Approaches to Natural Language, 1–10. Osaka: Osaka University.

• Akita, Kimi. 2025. Ideophones are more reliable than metaphors in Japanese pain descriptions. Language and Cognition 17: e7, 1–15.

• Barrett, Rusty. 2014. Ideophones and (non-)arbitrariness in the K’iche’ poetry of Humberto Ak’abal. Pragmatics and Society 5(3), 406–418.

• Cook, Toni, Clara McGilly, and Case Miranda. 2024. Innovative use of Shona ideophones within an adolescent community of practice. Linguistics Vanguard 10(4): 319-329. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2022-0136

• Dingemanse, Mark. 2009. Ideophones in unexpected places. In Peter K. Austin, Oliver Bond, Monik Charette, David Nathan & Peter Sells (eds.), Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation & Linguistic Theory 2, 83–94. London: SOAS.

• Dingemanse, Mark. 2011. The Meaning and Use of Ideophones in Siwu. Doctoral dissertation, Rabound University Nijmegen.

• Essegbey, James. 2013. Touch ideophones in Nyagbo. Selected Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 235–243. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

• Gawne, Lauren, Kristine A. Hildebrandt, and Suzy Styles. 2025. Natural disasters elicit spontaneous multimodal iconicity in onomatopoeia and gesture: Earthquake narratives from Nepal and New Zealand. Australian Journal of Linguistics 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/07268602.2025.2506628.

• Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide. 2017. Basque ideophones from a typological perspective. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 62(2): 196–220.

• Kataoka, Kuniyoshi. 2023. Language and Body in Place and Space: Discourse of Japanese Rock Climbing. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Bloomsbury Collections.

• Lundström, Håkan, and Jan-Olof Svantesson. 2025. Expressives in Kammu singing. In Jeffrey P. Williams (ed.), Capturing Expressivity: Contexts, Methods, and Techniques for Linguistic Research, 33-50. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Mihas, Elena. 2013. Composite ideophone-gesture utterances in the Ashéninka Perené 'community of practice', an Amazonian Arawak society from Central-Eastern Peru. Gesture 13 (1): 28–62. doi:10.1075/gest.13.1.02mih.

• Mokhathi-Mbhele, Masechaba Mahloli L. 2023. Sesotho ideophones as personal names: A systemic functional linguistics approach. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 41(4), 448–64.

• Mphande, Lupenga. 1992. Ideophones and African verse. Research in African Literatures 23(1), 117–29.

• Nuckolls, Janis B. 1996. Sounds Like Life: Sound-Symbolic Grammar, Performance, and Cognition in Pastaza Quechua. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Sakamoto, Maki. 2020. Onomatope maaketingu: Mofumofu kara hajimeru shijō chōsa, shōhin kaihatsu, hansoku shien [Ideophone-based marketing: Market survey, product development, and sales promotion support starting with mofumofu]. Tokyo: Ohmsha.

• Sasamoto, Ryoko. 2019. Onomatopoeia and Relevance: Communication of Impressions via Sound. 1st ed. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

• Schaefer, Ronald P. 1984. Toward an understanding of some ideophones of color in Emai.  Journal of West African Languages XIV, 2, 125–134. https://journalofwestafricanlanguages.org/downloads?task=download.send&id=173&catid=40&m=0

• Szatrowski, Polly. 2018. On the use of onomatopoeia in interaction: Examples from Japanese dairy taster brunches [in Japanese]. NINJAL Research Papers 16: 77–106.

• Tsujimura, Natsuko. 2022. Expressing Silence: Where Language and Culture Meet in Japanese. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.

• Tsujimura, Natsuko. 2023. Food, Language, and Society: Communication in Japanese Foodways. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.

• Van Hoey, Thomas. 2025a. Dynamic extensions of iconic form-meaning mappings in visual media, viewed through a prismatic lens. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics 22(2S): 110-127.

• Van Hoey, Thomas. 2025b. Waddling, wandering and waving: Literary Chinese ideophones and the motion semantic grid. Cognitive Semantics 11, 1–29. doi:10.1163/23526416-bja10075

• Yasui, Eiko. 2023. Japanese onomatopoeia in bodily demonstrations in a traditional dance instruction: A resource for synchronizing body movements. Journal of Pragmatics 207: 45–61.

• Zikmundová, Veronika, Jan Křivan, Vít Ulman, and Veronika Kapišovská. 2025. The role of ideophones in Khalkha Mongolian motion descriptions. Cognitive Semantics 11, 1–36.  doi:10.1163/23526416-bja10085