dialects and synaesthesia

[Kevin Dann]

Calling all synaesthetic students of dialect!

I recently discovered that a friend of mine who is a synaesthete--or
more exactly, a chromaesthete--has, along with color photisms for
letters and numbers; musical and non-musical sounds; some smells; some
tactile experiences, color-hearing for regional dialects. This makes me
wonder whether any of the crack dialecticians/phoneticians out there are
also synaesthetes.

Color-hearing synaesthetes (the most common form of synaesthesia, which
can involve "cross-sensory" perceptions in a number of different
"modalities" in different directions--eg., sounds, smells, tastes,
tactile sensations can produce colors in the visual field; but a taste
might produce a tactile synaesthesia, etc.) typically see highly
idiosyncratic, but completely stereotyped, shifting, abstract patterns
of color in response to sound. Work over the last century has shown how
inextricable synaesthetes' experience of these colored photisms is from
the meaning of the stimuli, that is, unless a synaesthete is able to
"register" the photism, the meaning of the stimulus (whether a vowel
sound or an entire word or a musical note) will not be grasped.

Typically, the more highly developed a synaesthete is within certain
"fields of meaning," the more fuly elaborated are the range of
synaesthetic perceptions. For example, as a visual artist and sculptor,
my friend has minutely examined the color qualities of her photisms. The
trained musician with synaesthesia (such as the singer with perfect
pitch who "tunes" his or her voice to the correct pitch by watching the
color the tone produces) will have a very fine-grained picture of the
colors evoked by musical tones, chords, keys, etc. A chef who has
colored gustation will be able to describe very closely how he uses his
colors to "tune" a meal.

I detail all of this in hopes that one or two (even that would be
beating the odds, for estimates of synaesthesia's occurrence in the
general population range from 1 in a million to 1 in 25,000) of the ADS
listmembers might be synaesthetes, and could describe the basic
phenomenology of how it operates for them in relationship to dialect
patterns.

Given that even now, synaesthetes are frequently dismissed as merely
"imagining" their photisms, I would be happy to hear from anyone off
list if they are reluctant to share their experiences online.

Thanks very much!

Kevin Dann