A Study Of Iconicity In Hillary Clinton’s Political Speeches And Its Stylistic Effects

Iconicity is an important part of cognitive linguistics. The study of iconicity is tostudy the contrasting relationship between the form of language and the meaning oflanguage and explore the underneath meaning of language form, therefore getting theimportant relationship between languages and cognation. Iconicity in cognitivelinguistics is displayed on different levels, such as phonetics level, lexical level,rhetorical level and grammatical level. At the same time, the study of iconicityinvolves different texts, such as poetry, advertisement, newspapers and speeches.Among speech texts, political speech is very good material to study. Political speechis made by politicians to express their political stand, convey political ideals andfinally achieve their political goal. So it is persuasive. Knowing the relation betweenlanguage from and its meaning, Politicians can deliver their information in a moreindirect way and persuade listeners to support their ideals.Among various political speeches, Hillary’s speeches stand out. During herpolitical career, like New York Senator, President Candidate of the Democratic Partyand Secretary of State, Hilary has made many persuasive speeches. As a womenpolitician, Hillary’s speeches have many unique features which are the keys tosuccess.This thesis takes a selection of Hillary’s best speeches as the materials for study.Among the13speeches, four are about women’s right, two about running forPresident Candidate of the Democratic Party, four about diplomatic relations, oneabout New York Senator and one about commencement speech. The speeches all havea length of over2000words. The theory to be adopted is the iconicity principle, that is, distance iconicity,quantity iconicity, sequencing iconicity and marked iconicity. The main body of thestudy is the first two while the latter two are the supporting parts. By qualitativemethod, the author explores the manifestations of the four iconicity principles andtheir stylistic effects and by quantitative method, the author finds that distanceiconicity is the most frequently used, followed by quality iconicity. It is also foundthat the adoption of these iconicity principles is closely related with Hillary’s personalexperience, her religion, her family value and her worldview. It is hoped that thisstudy will help readers better understand Hillary’s speeches as well as other politicalspeeches. It is also the author’s wish that the study will provide a new perspective toappreciate the beauty of the language.