Iconicity Of Linguistic Signs From A Pragmatic Point Of View

Iconicity of linguistic signs refers to the natural, non-arbitrary relationship between form andmeaning. This thesis aims at exploring iconicity of linguistic signs from a pragmatic point ofview (which will not be reiterated hereinafter). It consists of four chapters. The full text isorganized as follows.In Chapter One, the author makes it clear that the argumentation of the thesis is derived fromthe debate between the Naturalists and the Conventionalists. The thesis points out, by tracing backthe linguistic historical facts of the two schools, that iconicity, which is regarded as the extensionofthe Naturalists, is more reasonable. An overview of the relevant literature displays that the study oficonicity of linguistic signs has made certain progress in the academic field. The author of thethesis holds the view that linguistic signs are iconic.In order to pave the way for the forthcoming subject matter of iconicity, Chapter Twoprovides a theoretical prerequisite for iconicity by investigating its semiotic and philosophicalfoundations.Chapter Three dwells upon the iconic relationship between linguistic signs and meanings atfull length. For the sake of convenience, this chapter is developed within the framework of Kant's(1991) theory of categorization (i.e. quantity, quality, relation, and modality), namely, to exploreiconicity of linguistic signs in terms of quantity iconicity, quality iconicity, relation iconicity, andmodality iconicity in a comprehensive and systemic fashion. The reason for this is that theCategory Theory is of cogent power and generalization. This chapter falls into four sections.Section one is devoted to quantity iconicity. Quantity iconicity is a widely attested principle oficonicity, the principal dogma of which is that more linguistic signs signify more meanings, andthat longer linguistic expressions reflect more complex cognition. This section attempts to explorequantity iconicity in the pragmatic perspective by analyzing iconicityin terms of single syntax andmulti-syntax. From what has been investigated, a conclusion has been drawn that not only can alarger quantity of linguistic signs reinforce what is contained in linguistic signs, but also they canproduce extra utterance meanings.The first section is followed by relation iconicity. At the perceptual stage of cognition, Kantdescribes the perceptual materials in terms of two forms of time and space. At the intellectual stage,the category relation is introduced into discussion to deepen the description of the perceptualmaterials represented by the form of time and space, to which temporal causality and spatialdependency belong. Going along with the same account, this section claims that iconicity oflinguistic signs can be found with respect to temporalityand spatiality, i.e. iconicity in terms oftemporality (from the temporal sequence to the inferential causality) and iconicity in terms ofspatiality (dependency). On the basis of the previous studies of Haiman (1983) and Sweetser(2001), iconicity will be pursued further in terms of temporality from a pragmatic point of view.The discussion may be grouped into iconicity in content domain and iconicityin epistemic domain.The former refers to the coincidence of the sequence of linguistic signs with the order of actualevents; the latter indicates that the unidirectional temporal sequence exerts an imperceptibleinfluence on people's thinking, and the sequence comes to serve to express relationship such ascause and effect in epistemic or reasoning world, i.e. it holds true in reasoning or in logical domain.Iconicity in terms of spatiality may be classified into iconicity of physical space and iconicity ofmental space. The former refers to the contiguity or togetherness in concept being put together inlinguistic signs, i.e. the parallelism of the dependency on objects to the dependency on linguisticsigns, involving simple adjacency, relative adjacency, and graphology; the latter, iconicity ofmental space, also known as iconicity of perception, specifies that when human being perceivesthe world, he tends to observe and evaluate the world according to his own perspective,----"perspective imposed on the world by the speaker"(Croft, 2000: 164). Linguistic expressionsthus mirror the observer's perspective. In this mode of perception, anthropocentrism plays animportant role. The third section turns to quality iconicity. Quality, being the inherent property of the object,is to distinguish one thing from another. In Kant's view, things possess substantiality and areconcomitantly confined by restriction. In perceiving the objective world, the factors exertinginfluence on the results of observation are on the one hand, the external objective world per se, i.e.substantiality, and on the other hand, the subjective penchant of the observer, i.e. restriction. Theyare reflected in linguistic signs. Thus linguistic expressions , characterized by cognitive...