Abstract
Expressives (i.e. linguistic items used for conveying emotions) can be phonosymbolic in nature or culturally-motivated. In Polish, echoic reduplicated sequences with the formant sr- are frequently used to convey contempt. We conducted an online survey to determine whether sr- is universally associated with this emotion. We tested speakers of Polish, but also of 2 other Indo-European languages (English and Spanish), and 3 non-Indo-European languages (Hungarian, Turkish and Indonesian). Findings suggest that only Polish speakers associate sr- with contempt, but less than expected. This suggests that this association does not result from any phonosymbolic effect or is typical of Indo-European languages generally. But is confined instead to Polish language, seemingly because sr- is the onset of one derogatory term in this language (srać). Still, the effect is stronger when concerning real words compared to pseudowords.