Nonarbitrariness Of Language And Its Manifestation In Pragmatics

The notion of arbitrariness has been a central concern throughout the history ofthe Western linguistic thought, but Saussure, the founder of structuralism, gives it anew meaning in the sense of modern linguistics and thus the term arbitrariness isalways associated with the name of Saussure. Due to the great influence of Saussure,arbitrariness has been one of the main tenets of the 20th-century linguistics.Is there any limit on arbitrariness? Arbitrariness shouldn't and couldn't standalone and it has to be limited to some extent. Hence Saussure brings forward theconception of motivation to set limits on arbitrariness, though he doesn't give adetailed discussion of it in his Course in General Linguistics. Yet not until the 1960sdid linguists make a comprehensive study of motivation. As a result, different kindsof motivations at the levels of lexicon, expression, and sentence as well asisomorphism and economy have been revealed. What's more, the development ofcognitive and functional linguistics brings out some innovative lines of thought likeiconicity, categorization, metaphor, and grammar as a conceptual system, whichrelativizes the Saussurean view that language is predominantly arbitrary. Thoughmotivation and iconicity have been accepted as two antonyms of arbitrariness, thereare still problems of the two concepts in terms of definition, object delimitation andmethod, and therefore we use the term "nonarbitrariness"as the opposition ofarbitrariness. In other words, as an important feature of language, nonarbitrarinessdoes exist and it includes at least two components —motivation and iconicity.Then what is the relation between nonarbitrariness and arbitrariness?Structuralists and formalists believe that language is essentially arbitrary.Cognitive-functionalists hold the radical view that nonarbitrariness is thefundamental principle of language. Still some other linguists maintain that languageis both nonarbitrary and arbitrary. After reexamining arbitrariness and the critique ofthe prevalent viewpoints on nonarbitrariness, we conclude that both nonarbitrarinessand arbitrariness play their part in three aspects: within a linguistic sign, between alinguistic sign and its referent, and in linguistic signs as language devices tocategorize the world. Take the first respect for instance, the dialectic relation between...