The word “bed” looks like a bed: Orthographic iconicity in English

Iconicity refers to the sense of resemblance between aspects of a signal's form and aspects of its meaning. This has traditionally been studied in the sound of words in spoken language, and the visual and kinesthetic properties of signs in signed languages. Here I ask the novel question of whether iconicity can be perceived in the shapes of words in a phonographic script (i.e., one in which symbols code for sounds) by native speakers. I collected ratings of orthographic iconicity (i.e., the extent to which the written form of a word resembles its meaning) for 3,150 English words. Unlike phonological iconicity, words high in orthographic iconicity tended to refer to visual meanings, speaking to the validity of the ratings and the distinction between these two forms of iconicity. Consistent with phonological iconicity, these words tended to be marked (e.g., contain infrequent letters and complex onsets), suggesting a general feature of iconicity. Two instances of objectively quantified resemblance between form and meaning (i.e., between the size and shape of written words and their referents) contributed to orthographic iconicity. Crucially, orthographic iconicity facilitated responses in several mega study datasets, even after controlling for suite of lexical semantic variables. These results suggest that participants can perceive iconicity in the visual appearance of words, and that it has measurable psychological effects.