ATLAS OF LANGUAGE

AT-CORE-244-007 · ATLAS 260

Resonance

An enduring relation of response: a sound, image, word, thought, or counterpart is received and answered, allowing other levels to reverberate and the participants or their field of meaning to change.

Part of the subject path Semantics and Signs

Why is this entry in the Atlas?

A · Analytical concept R1 · Distinct contribution to understanding

Resonance contributes an account of responsive change in which disagreement can sustain the relation rather than terminate it. Neither acoustic return nor agreement alone establishes the responsive transformation required here.

Colours and admission grounds

The rectangular label identifies the entry function: F – linguistic figure or procedure; A – analytical concept; G – foundational concept; E – selected concrete case. The rounded badge indicates the admission ground: R1 – distinctive contribution; R2 – necessary foundation; R3 – justified illustrative case. This editorial rationale explains the current selection rather than claiming an undocumented original selection history.

Explanation

In the Atlas, resonance names a relation in which something is not merely transmitted or repeated but received and answered by a distinct counterpart. The response may amplify, attenuate, redirect, or transform what arrived and therefore remains only partly predictable. Beginning with acoustic sympathetic vibration, the concept is extended to linguistic and aesthetic processes: a word summons a memory, a form answers an earlier form, or one voice alters another's stance. Difference is essential. Where there is only uniformity, mechanical repetition, or compelled agreement, resonance in this sense has not yet occurred.

Movement of thought

1. Something encounters a space, a text, or a counterpart. 2. The receiving side responds according to its own constitution. 3. The response returns in altered form and makes further layers perceptible. 4. The two sides retain their difference, yet neither remains entirely unchanged by the encounter. 5. Attention consequently shifts from isolated entities to the responsive relation between them.

Scientific use case

An intertextual or interactional study can identify the prior form that is taken up, the observable response that follows, and the resulting change in meaning. This makes it possible to distinguish resonance from recurrence, correlation, or an asserted effect.

Example

A train motif from the opening returns in a later farewell scene. It does not merely repeat the earlier journey; under the pressure of parting, it makes that journey newly audible.

Counterexample

If a sentence is copied unchanged and no new context or counterpart answers it, there is repetition but not yet resonance.

Distinction

Do not equate resonance with echo, repetition, or harmony. An echo returns, repetition reproduces, and harmony foregrounds agreement; resonance requires a responsive counterpart and may also carry tension or dissent.

Effect on thought and perception

The concept redirects analysis from linear causation and isolated signs towards response, reverberation, and reciprocal change.

Resonance

Resonance is both an object and a method here: the Atlas asks which concepts can answer one another without being declared identical.

Etymology

Technical core term; individual etymological review pending

Provenance

ATLAS 241 residual-case triage → ATLAS 244 controlled integration → ATLAS 247 bilingual editorial extension and dedicated visualisation

Cite this entry

Reich, Michael (Hrsg./ed.): „Resonance“. Atlas der Sprache, AT-CORE-244-007. ATLAS 260, data model 1.6.0. https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-CORE-244-007

https://atlasoflanguage.com/concept/AT-CORE-244-007

The address remains stable; editorial content may evolve. Editorial reading state: 2026-10-15. Include your access date for precise references.

Historical background

Bergson uses musical comparison when discussing how an emotion can engage a person more broadly and how spectators participate in what is presented. This is a historical witness to resonance-like explanatory imagery, not evidence that the Atlas concept descends directly from his account. The Atlas can ask how an encounter changes the significance of another experience and how that change carries beyond the immediate stimulus. Bergson’s contrast between emotional participation and comic distance offers one conceptual tension to examine. A musical analogy does not itself establish a physical or neurological mechanism. Direct lexical and philosophical sources are still required for resonance and its distinct senses. The witness is valuable as a bounded comparison, with metaphor, explanatory model and measurable phenomenon kept separate.

How conceptual history changes the analysis

Metaphorical resonance, measurable vibration and a responsive relationship must not be treated as identical.

References for the historical section

Historical source evidence and Atlas applications remain separate; this import does not assert new first attestations or a fresh exhaustive source verification.