On Rhetorical Effects Of Iconicity

The theory of iconicity is put forward in contrast to that of arbitrariness and has been developing gradually. In fact, the debate on arbitrariness and iconicity of language dates back to ancient Greek, when there was the heated argument between Realism and Nominalism.Ferdinand de Saussure (1961), the founder of modern linguistics, puts forward the arbitrariness principle of language signs, insisting that language signs are arbitrary and looking on this principle as the most important and the first principle controlling the whole language system. This opinion exerts great influence on later linguists. Saussure makes a distinction between two types of arbitrariness--absolute 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 iconicity, which refers to the study of the similarity between form or structure and the concept or conceptual structure it represents, 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 (1965) identifies three categories of signs-icon, index and symbol-which differ from each other in degrees of arbitrariness. Further, Peirce divides icons into imagic icons and diagrammatic icons.Since the late half of the 20th century, with the development of functionalism and cognitive science, many linguists have begun to form new understandings of the relations between forms and meanings of linguistic signs. Once again, motivation, with iconicity of language in particular, attract great attention in the academic circle. Linguists such as Lyons (1991), Givon (1985), Greenberg (1966) and Haiman (1980, 1985) all point out that to some extent, there exist certain similarities between language signs and their referents and languages are the direct reflections of the...