A Contrastive Study Of Iconicity In English And Chinese Poems

Based on the iconicity theory in cognitive linguistics, this thesis makes a comparative study of iconicity in English and Chinese poems.The present paper consists of four chapters apart from the introduction and the conclusion. In the first chapter, the author makes a brief review of the emergence and development of the iconicity theory both at home and abroad as well as its existing limitations. Chapter Two introduces Peirce's trichotomy theory of signs and Haiman's iconicity theory, which construct the framework of this thesis. The data collection and the analytical procedure is also explained here. Chapter Three analyzes iconicity at the phonetic, lexical-phrasal, syntactic and textual levels. In the process of discussion a comparative analysis is made on iconicity reflected in the selected poems of English and Chinese. Since both similarities and differences are found the author accounts for them from the perspectives of linguistics, cognizance and aesthetics. Chapter Four summarizes the findings of this study and points out its implications and limitations.To sum up, this thesis makes a thorough and systematic study of English and Chinese poems in terms of iconicity. It is hoped that such an analysis and comparison will be beneficial not only to poem appreciation but also to EFL teaching in Chinese.