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Outlines:
1. History of Iconicity
2. Concepts of Iconicity in Language
3. Classification of Iconicity
4. Application of Iconicity to English
Teaching
5. Conclusion
Part 1
History Of Iconicity
1.1 Nominalism VS Realism
VS
Nominalism (also called the Conventionists) held the
view that the names and signs were conventional
results of cultural and social development to be used
to signify things, and there was no internal
relationship between signs and what they referred to;
while Realism (also called Naturalism) thought that
there existed an essential relationship between words
and their signified, and words were nothing but the
natural names we give to reality or things in the
world.
• In the year 1916, F. D Saussure published his famous book
Course in General Linguistics in which he put forward the notion
of arbitrariness.
• Later, transformative-generative linguistics represented by Noam
Chomsky praised the concept of arbitrariness highly. Since then
the concept of arbitrariness became the primary principle of
language, and it dominated linguistics for almost half a century.
• In 1965, R. Jakobson, for the first time, put forward
a real challenge to arbitrariness in his famous paper
“Quest for the Essence of Language”. From Peirce’s
definition of “icon”, “index” and “symbol”, the concept
of iconicity becomes more and more clear and exact.
John Haiman
Haiman Iconicity in Syntax ,1985
1992, another symposium on “Iconicity in Language” was held in
University of Rome and also after two years, Raffaele Simone
brought together 14 papers on various aspects of iconicity in
language.
Besides onomatopoeia, hieroglyphs and associative
compounds, sign language is another evidence of the
theory of iconicity. Through diachronic study of sign
languages in various countries, linguists find that
they are highly iconic in the beginning. For example,
ASL (American Sign Language) is quite similar to
English grammar structure (Carroll, 1999:34), which
gives a convincing support of iconicity.
• (1) the theory of iconicity has become one of the important branches
of cognitive linguistics, and it is the inevitable result of a deeper
understanding of language, psychology and cognition.
• (2) Language is motivated in nature. Only 9% of English words are
totally arbitrary. ( 1996:61) So it is incorrect that arbitrariness is the
primary and foremost principle of language.
• (3) The linearity character of language determines that language
cannot be exactly similar to reality like painting. Arbitrariness is the
highly development of abstract ideation. Both iconicity and
arbitrariness exist in language, and we should treat these two aspects
objectively.
• Hu Zhuanglin(1996) said, “view of language
arbitrariness was dominant in a rahter long period.
Today, more emphasis is on language nonarbitrariness.” He pointed out, “The general
tendency of language iconicity is undeniable.”
• Shen Jiaxuan(1993), in his article On syntactic
Iconicity， also introduced and commented on the
related research abroad，“ At present, iconicity is a
hot topic when talking about syntax in terms of
cognitive linguistics.”
• J Du Wenli (1996) discussed iconicity of English at the
level of vocabulary and syntax
• Moreover , Wang Yin (2003)， Zhang Min(1997)，
Yan Chensong (1997)，etc. also wrote articles on
iconicity， especially on syntactic iconicity.
Part 2:
Concepts of Iconicity in
Language
2.1 From semiotic point of view
2.2 From cognitive point of view
2.3 From functional point of view
point of view
Charles S. Peircean definition (semiotic theory)
• The semiotic notion of iconicity originates with the
American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.
Iconicity is a relation between a sign and its object in
which the form of the sign recapitulates the object in
some way. It is the resemblance between the signifier
(sound pattern or written form) and the signified
(concept or meaning), for examples onomatopoeia
and interjections.
e.g.
signifier
miaow
(direct likeness in
sound/word-shape)
signified
"sound made by cat"
Charles S. Pierce’s “Semiotic Triangle” (1932)
(http://www.rdillman.com/HFCL/
TUTOR/Semiotics/sem1.html)
Charles S. Pierce’s “Semiotic Triangle”
CONCEPT
perception
SIGN
convention
experience
OBJECT
Each of the lines represents a two-way
negotiation.
• Pierce’s model explains how communication
(convention, experience, perception) works as an
interactive process in the continual changing (or,
renegotiation) of meaning.
• "...in the syntax of every language there
are logical icons of the kind that are aided by
conventional rules..." (Peirce,1940)
2.2 From cognitive point of view
• Cognitive linguists view inconicity as the
similarity between linguistic form and
cognitive category or cognitive model.It deals
with the relationship between language and
mind.
• Cognitive linguists asserted that our experience about the
world and how we observe and explain the language can
make an effect on language, which contributes significantly
to iconicity study. It provides powerful evidence for the
iconic nature of language and challenges the arbitrary nature
of language strongly. Cognitive linguistics argues that
language is not arbitrarily created, but it is constrained by
cognitive environment and social factors. Linguistic symbols,
on the basic level category, to some extent, are arbitrary, or
some have lost motivation, but during the process of
constituting larger units (phrases and sentences), linguistic
interrelationship is obvious.
• "instead of comparing words and
grammatical structures with real objects and
events, we may now compare them with our
categories and cognitive models of the real
world,and this makes the comparison much
easier and much plausible."(Ungerer &
Schmid, 2001)
• The intuition behind iconicity is quite simple:
the structure of language reflects in some
way the structure of experience, that is to say,
the structure of the world, including the
perspective imposed on the world by the
speaker. The structure of language is
therefore motivated or explained by the
structure of experience to the extent that the
two match. (Croft, 1990)
2.3 From functional point of view
• Linguistic structure reflects in some way the
structure of experience (e.g., Haiman 1983, Croft
2001, etc.)
• According to Cognitive Grammar, language
structures may be motivated and shaped by
human conceptual knowledge, which, in turn, is
related to human physical experience.
Haiman characterizes iconicity as “a set of signs
whose meaning in some crucial way resembles their
form”.
Fromkin (2004:584) defines iconicity as “a nonarbitrary relation between form and meaning in which
the form bears a resemblance to its meaning”.
Hopper (2005:27) regards iconicity as “the property of
similarity between one item and another”.
Part 3
Classification of
Iconicity
3.1 Pierce’s classification of icons
• According to Peirce, only one type of sign,
which he calls ‘symbol’, has an arbitrary
form/meanning relationship (Saussure’s
standard interpretion ).
• The other major category of sign, for which a
certain similarity between form and meaning
(i.e. real objects) can be claimed, is called
‘icon’.
• (F. Ungerer & H. J. Schmid: 2001, 250-251 )
Three types of icons
(1) The imagic icon: the simplest one, in which the form is
physically similar in some way to the meaning, imitative in
some general sense (e.g. onomatopoeia and soundsymbolism).
(2) The diagrammatic icon: In Peirce’s words, diagrams are
icons “which represent the relations…of the parts of one
thing by analogous relations in their own parts…many
diagrams resemble their objects not all in looks;
it is only in respect to the relations of their
parts that their likeness consists.”
3) Metaphor: in the third type, which was
called metaphor, likeness rests on the
parallelism between signs.
(Hookway,1985:105-107)
3.2 Haiman’s classification of icons
On the basis of Peirce, Haiman distinguishes two
types of icons: imagic and diagrammatic. He
defines them as (Haiman, 1980:515):
1) An iconic image is a single sign which resembles
its referent with respect to some (not necessarily
visual) characteristic: commonly cited examples are
photographs, statues, program music—and, in
language, onomatopoeic words
2) An iconic diagram is a systematic
arrangement of signs, none of which
necessarily resembles its referent, but
whose relationships to each other mirror
the relationships of their referents.
3.3 Haiman’s further classification of
diagrammatic
Then he further distinguishes two kinds of
diagrammatic iconicity: isomorphism and
motivation.
1) Isomorphism is an icon of “one-to-one
correspondence between the signans and the
signatum, whether this be a single word or a
grammatical construction”. He assumes that
different forms must have different meanings and it
is a bi-unique correspondence between the signans
and the signatum.
2) Motivation refers to “a perceived similarity
between the structure of language and the
structure of the concepts that it represents”
(Haiman,1985:71). That is, the structure of
language directly reflects the structure of
the concepts.
Today, the three subclasses of the icon are well
known to specialists in linguistic iconicity and
thus there are three types of iconicity:
(1) imagic iconicity,
(2) diagrammatic iconicity
(3) metaphorical iconicity
(Hopper 2005:2).
Fischer and Nanny have offered an overview in this
respect.
Part 4
Application of
Iconicity to English
Teaching
4.1 The Application of Iconicity to Vocabulary
Teaching
4.1.1 Iconicity Related to Vocabulary:
Ⅰ. Etymological Iconicity:
Ⅱ. Phonological Iconicity: means there are some natural relations between the
pronunciation of a word and its reference. (onomatopoeia)
Ⅲ. Morphological Iconicity: the similarity between the spelling of a word and its
reference or word-building and its reference. (“zigzag”, “wave”, “hedge”, “SOS”)
Ⅳ. Grammatical Iconicity: the similarity between word
meaning and grammatical markedness. ( “cars”,
“walked”)
Ⅴ. Sequencing Iconicity: language is the mirror of our
mind, the reflection of our cognition mechanism, and
linguistic symbols are arranged in the order similar to our
mind and cultural concepts. (“from dawn to dusk”, “from
day to night”, “from head to foot”, “from birth to death”)
Ⅵ. Metaphorical Iconicity: refers to the indirect similarity
between words and their references. (“green horn”)
4.1.2 Enlightenment on English Vocabulary Teaching
① situational teaching method (“out-herods”, “aboveboard”)
② acoustic image memory: songs or rhymes; sound
association
③ visual memory (“baggage”)
④ components memory: root, prefix and suffix
⑤ associated teaching method: the aspects of phonology,
semantics and metaphor, etc.
4.2 The Application of
Iconicity to Grammar
Teaching
4.2.1 Principles in syntactic iconicity:
Ⅰ. The Principle of Distance Iconicity: the grammar of a language might
formally represent the conceptual distance between entities by
physically separating the linguistic elements that encode those entities.
Ⅱ. The Principle of Sequence Iconicity: the sequence of linguistic form
or text structure is a reflection of the conceptual or experiential order
the form or text structure represents.
Ⅲ. The Principle of Quantity Iconicity: more linguistic signs employed
suggest more conceptual meanings conveyed.
Ⅳ. The Principle of Markedness Iconicity: the order
from unmarkedness to
markednesss which corresponds to the natural order
of cognition.
Ⅴ. The Principle of Asymmetry Iconicity: the
important information in human cognition is always
put in the prominent place of a sentence, which is
quite similar to the relation between figure and
ground, and theme and rheme.
4.2.2 Enlightenment on English Grammar Teaching
⑴ The Expression of Coordination (“Mary’s and Henry’s sheep” &
“Mary and Henry’s sheep” the principle of distance iconicity “She
went to Beijing, New York, and London” & “She went to Beijing,
then to New York, and then to London” the principle of quantity
iconicity)
⑵ The Ordering of Pre-Modifying: (definite word + subjective adjective
+ size + shape + old or new + color + nationality + material + use +
head word the principle of distance iconicity)
⑶ The Ordering of Clauses: (“He shot and killed her” & * “He killed
and shot her” the Principle of Sequence Iconicity)
⑷ Sentence Patterns: (“subject + predicate + object” the principle of
distance iconicity; OSV, CsSV the principle of topic iconicity).
⑸ Relation between Verbs and Objects: “hear somebody or something”
& “hear of somebody or something” “help somebody do something”
and “help somebody to do something” the principle of distance
iconicity)
⑹ Connotation: (“boys are boys” & “war is war” the principle of
quantity iconicity)
⑺ The Difference between Gerund and Infinitive: I should like to take a
holiday & I like spending Sunday mornings in bed the principle of
distance iconicity)
⑻ Application to Other Aspects: restrictive and non-restrictive clauses;
distinctions between similar sentences (否定前移）; sequence of the
tense and aspect of a Predicate (have been V.-ing) the principle of
distance iconicity
Conclusion:
Shen Jiaxuan (1993: 14) claims that language is
iconic in that linguistic structure,
especially syntactic structure or even syntactic
rules are non-arbitrary, and motivated, i.e.,
there is some natural relation between syntactic
structure and conceptual structure.