This paper investigates how museum audio descriptions (ADs) linguistically reconstruct visual artworks and whether different artistic movements systematically shape the embodied qualities of their verbal mediation. While previous research has shown that AD tends to be lexically dense, metaphor-rich, and stylistically complex, little attention has been paid to the degree of cross-modal “semblance” between visual form and verbal expression. We propose that, as a form of intersemiotic translation, AD may employ iconicity (form–meaning resemblance) and sensorimotor grounding as strategies for evoking aesthetic experience.

Drawing on a corpus of approximately 400 English-language museum ADs describing paintings from six modern movements (Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Postimpressionism, Surrealism, and Abstraction), we model lexical iconicity and multidimensional perceptual strength using two large-scale psycholinguistic resources: the Iconicity Norms (Winter et al. 2023) and the Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (Lynott et al. 2019). For each description, we compute mean iconicity, iconicity selectivity, and modality-specific perceptual activation profiles. Sensorimotor dimensions are normalised both relative to the English lexicon and to the AD corpus itself, allowing identification of stylistically disproportionate sensory grounding.

Generalized linear mixed-effects models are used to estimate the influence of artistic movement while controlling for painter and commissioning institution. We examine overall iconicity, part-of-speech-specific effects, modality dominance, and the sensory grounding of highly iconic words.

The study contributes to Digital Humanities in three ways. First, it demonstrates how transparent, human-derived lexical norms can be operationalised for corpus-based modelling of cultural heritage discourse. Second, it provides a computational framework for linking aesthetic style with embodied linguistic structure. Third, it offers insight into how institutions construct perceptual experience for visually impaired audiences, framing audio description as a mode of embodied aesthetic mediation rather than mere informational transfer.