A Burning World Of War

This study is made to illustrate how a literary work makes frequent use of the iconic potential inherent in language to construct a fictional world view. Contrary to Saussure's arbitrariness between signifier and signified, iconicity will allow an analogue relation between the linguistic signifier and the extra—linguistic signified. Natural and perceived similarity between form and meaning constitutes the basis of iconicity, which has been discussed ever since Aristotle first posited the principle of mimesis. This thesis is meant to demonstrate that the form (i.e. the narrative pattern and linguistic arrangement) is iconically relevant to the meaning of a literary work, or to be more specific, the tangible form could visualize the abstract theme of a novel. A detailed case study of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms is presented to show that instead of the commonly accepted two themes of love and war, the overriding theme of this novel is war - the universal and pervasive condition of existence. The burning world of war is produced by the iconic force in language on almost every level of the text: i.e. the choice of lexical items (general/specific word, possessive/non-possessive word, repetition), word order, syntax (transitivity, cohesion), style (noun/verb style, parataxis/hypotaxis), and narrative (narrative structure, focalization). Through the iconic quantitative and sequential means, the abstract theme becomes accessible and formless fictional world becomes tangible.The analyzing methods used in this thesis give credit to the studies of linguistics, narrative and stylistics. The examples found in the text will be identified and described by following the linguistic, narrative and stylistic procedures and will then be interpreted in an iconic approach. Iconicity, which is an interdisciplinary field, could readily integrate the study of language with that of literature. In particular, this thesis intends to prove that the gap between linguistics and literary criticism may be bridged through the application to literary texts of the instruments that have been developed by linguists.Another gap being filled is the gap between the work/writer and the reader. With the iconic form-miming-meaning devices, the writer's 'inside' conceptualization of the fictional world can be brought 'outside' and reflected in the linguistic performance and in other formal features of the novel. Once the reader's attention has been drawn to the iconic uses of the form, the literary work will be read with an increased appreciation of, and a greater insight into, the writer's original idea and his superb craft of language.