Recognition of Onomatopoeia for Various Types of Pain in the Middle-Aged Japanese Speaker Group

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the recognition of onomatopoeia for various types of pain in middle-aged Japanese speaker group. The 30 research participants of the middle-age group were asked to select onomatopoeia for pain of the particular feature by the bipolar numerical evaluation method. Research participants were then asked to enter a numerical value between 0 and 100 in one of the left and right columns specified by which of the "so-called" bipolar pains they would indicate. Participants were presented 30 words of the more than 100 candidates for onomatopoeia that represent specific “so-called” bipolar pain. Then, the ratio and average evaluation value of each onomatopoeia selected as onomatopoeia representing the characteristics of 12 types of pain were calculated. In this study, examples of onomatopoeias that met the criteria for some "so-called" bipolar pain were presented. Methods for applying the results of this study to support pain communication in Japanese were discussed.