Syntactic Iconicity And Its Stylistic Effect In Literature

Theory of language iconicity was put forward in contrast to that of arbitrariness and has been developing gradually. In fact, the debate on iconicity and arbitrariness of language dates back to ancient Greek, when there was the heated argument between Realism and Nominalism.Saussure, the founder of modern linguistics, founded structuralism. He put forward the arbitrariness principle of language signs, insisted that language signs are arbitrary and looked on this principle as the most important and the first principle controlling the whole language system. This opinion produces great influence on later linguists. (But it should be noted that Saussure didn't hold the idea absolutely. Saussure made a distinction between two types of arbitrariness梐bsolute arbitrariness and relative arbitrariness. The former means that the creation and use of linguistic signs have no motivation. And the latter means that linguistic signs have certain motivation. Thus research on syntactic iconicity can be seen not as the overall denial of Saussure's theory, but as the development of Saussure's relative arbitrariness).Founder of American practicalism and semiotics, the famous philosopher, C.S Pierce identifies three categories of signs梚con, index and symbol梬hich differ from each other in degrees of arbitrariness. The natural relationship between the signifier and the signified is iconicity. Further, Pierce divided icon into imagic icon and diagrammatic icon. Diagrammatic iconicity in language is mainly reflected in syntactic iconicity.From the 1960s, more and more linguists come to realize that the relationship between signifier and its signified cannot be generalized merely as arbitrariness and they dwell on language iconicity. Thegenerally accepted opinion is that both arbitrariness and iconicity are the objective properties of language and that both iconicity and the abstract syntactic rules work on the level of syntax. The most distinguished scholar studying syntactic iconicity is John Haiman. Adopting Pierce's method, Haiman also divides icon into two groups: imagic icon and diagrammatic icon. In language, diagrammatic iconicity is mainly embodied in syntactic iconicity, which is divided into two kinds: isomorphism and motivation.There are three categories of iconicity in language. They are syntactic iconicity based upon word order, morphological iconicity based upon word structure, and phonological iconicity based upon the imitative and affective associations of sounds .Now research on iconicity has gone beyond the latter two and concentrates mainly on syntactic iconicity.Since it is claimed that "partly by means of the study of syntax, we can arrive at a considerable knowledge of the structure of the world" (Russell 1973:328), this paper attempts to demonstrate how the structure of syntax reflects the structure of thought and the structure of reality. Further, on the basis of examining the manifestation of syntactic iconicity in poetry and fiction, the author approves of the stylistic value of syntactic iconicity that will benefit literature creation and appreciation.This thesis consists of five parts, including the introduction and conclusion.The introduction presents a brief account of the debate on language iconicity and arbitrariness and the resurgence of the interest in language iconicity, especially syntactic iconicity.Chapter 1 provides the review and the contemporary view on language arbitrariness and language iconicity of previous research. The argument between the two theories can be divided into three stages:(1) The stage of two theories at a deadlock.(2) The stage of Saussure.(3) The stage of post-Saussure.At present, it is generally recognized that both iconicity and arbitrariness exist in language. And the statement of problems of current study is followed by the purposes of the thesis on syntactic iconicity: demonstrating how the structures of language reflect the structures of thought and reality, and attempting to practice it in stylistics.Chapter 2 mainly discuss...