An Iconic Study On Classic Chinese Poetry From The Perspective Of Iconicity Theory

Iconicity theory has gained increasing attention in the wake of the development of semiotics as well as cognitive linguistics. Several iconicity principles have been put forward, including iconicity of quantity, iconicity of sequence, iconicity of markedness, iconicity of proximity, etc. These principles reveal how language imitates the external world, as well as human experience, human thoughts. In other words, human cognition pattern is recorded in language to a certain extent.The thesis makes an attempt to analyze classic Chinese poetry under the first three iconicity principles, aiming to figure out whether iconicity exists widely in poetic language; what roles iconicity plays in poetry as well as how it works in poetic texts. Through the study of concrete examples of classic Chinese poetry, it is evident that poetic language manifests iconicity to a large extent because poets prefer to employ rhetorical devices to achieve a certain effect. However, the study demonstrates that most of the rhetorical devices possess a common cognitive basis, which is iconicity. Thus iconicity helps poets to achieve various kinds of rhetorical effects. The application of iconicity to the analysis of poems equips readers with the awareness of iconicity, so as to help them possess a new perspective to appreciate poems.