Ideophones in English

The ideophone is a way to mark a direct quote in languages other than English. They can be used as a state of verbi things, so they kind of inflect, but wait, they'll inflect. The impression I get is mostly they float along on their own or they're very simply locked in with do verbs or say verbs. If there is a con link out there that uses them heavily, I would love to hear about it.