This weekend, homes across the English-speaking world, much like others globally, echoed with the bizarre yet catchy chorus of “Wa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pow!” and “Hatee-hatee-hatee-ho!” These are, of course, the signature sounds from the 2013 viral video sensation, “What Does the Fox Say?” by the Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis. If you’ve been online in the past decade, chances are you’ve encountered this infectious tune. But beyond its undeniable catchiness and comedic value, “What Does the Fox Say?” subtly delves into fascinating questions about language, perception, and our relationship with the natural world.
Like millions of others captivated by its quirky charm, you might find yourself pondering the same existential questions the song playfully raises. As Devon Maloney at Wired aptly noted, the song worms its way into your brain, prompting inquiries that resonate with philosophical depth: “Why am I hopelessly addicted to this song about animal noises?” “Am I fundamentally misunderstanding animal sounds?” And most importantly, the question that drives the entire song: “Wait, seriously, what sound does a fox actually make?”
One might approach this question with scientific pragmatism. As some keen observers, perhaps even your own children, might point out: “We actually know what a fox says! It’s like a scream, almost human-like.” Indeed, a quick search online will reveal recordings of fox vocalizations, often described as screams, barks, and howls, a far cry from the whimsical sounds Ylvis conjures.
However, the genius of “What Does the Fox Say?” lies not in its zoological accuracy, but in its exploration of a more profound “semiotic mystery.” The song isn’t truly about accurately mimicking animal sounds. Instead, it’s about the human endeavor to represent these sounds through language, specifically through onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia, those words that echo the sounds they describe, are a cornerstone of language, especially in early language acquisition. Think of a baby learning “moo” for cow or “quack” for duck – these are often among the first words they grasp, alongside “mama” and “dada.” The video, with its scenes of an elder reading to a child, subtly emphasizes this connection to early learning and our innate fascination with sound-based words. The humor and delight of “What Does the Fox Say?” stem partly from seeing sophisticated adults, champagne flutes in hand, playfully reverting to this childlike impulse to imitate the animal kingdom.
Adding another layer of comedic brilliance, the video visually reinforces the artificiality of our linguistic representations. The costumed adults in “What Does the Fox Say?” are clearly just that – humans in costumes, far removed from realistic animal portrayals. This isn’t the uncanny valley of Cats, with its unsettlingly human-like felines. Instead, the video operates in a playful, almost children’s picture-book realm. When the “elephant man” emerges, trumpeting a “toot,” we instantly recognize the humorous disconnect. His “toot” no more resembles a real elephant sound than his flimsy costume resembles an actual elephant. The animal costumes and sounds in “What Does the Fox Say?” are not imitations of real animals, but rather caricatures, mimicking the simplified, cartoonish icons we often use to represent animals in popular culture.
In this light, “What Does the Fox Say?” unexpectedly delivers a sophisticated lesson in linguistics. It subtly exposes the inherent human longing for a “pure” language, where words would have a direct, almost magical connection to the objects and sounds they represent. Yet, it simultaneously reveals the fallacy of this very idea. Linguists like Ferdinand de Saussure have long argued that language is fundamentally arbitrary. Words don’t possess an inherent link to their referents. There’s nothing intrinsically “cat-like” about the word “cat.” “Cat” signifies a cat simply because it is not “bat” or “hat,” existing within a system of differences. Similarly, “neigh” and “horse,” while seemingly sound-related, are no closer to the equus ferus in some inherent way than if they were spelled out in Morse code (a point cleverly hinted at in the video’s question about a h0-0-0-0rse and Morse code). Meaning emerges from the relational system of language itself, a “chain of signifiers,” rather than from any inherent connection to the “real” world. The fact that onomatopoeic words vary across languages – a dog says “ouah-ouah” in French and “wan-wan” in Japanese – further illustrates that even these sound-mimicking terms are shaped by linguistic convention, not pure, universal sound imitation.
The term “onomatopoeia” itself, derived from Greek words meaning “name-making,” reveals this very human drive to categorize and label our world, to “capture and communicate the essence of things.” However, the etymology also highlights the inherent limitation: we make the names; we don’t simply discover some pre-existing, perfect label. Despite our yearning to understand things “as they truly are,” our attempts to name and define them are always approximations, human constructs. Yet, this drive to know and name persists. “What is your sound… Will we ever know?” the lead singer croons, lamenting (or perhaps celebrating) the enduring mystery of the fox’s true sound. Ultimately, “What Does the Fox Say?”, far from being just a silly viral video, cleverly engages with existential questions about language, reality, and the limits of human understanding, questions that have indeed captivated philosophers and poets for centuries.
