Iconicity And Its Application To English Teaching

Iconicity, as a basic feature of linguistic signs in contrast to arbitrariness, has become a major subject in the cognitive study of language, and it plays a significant role in the exploration of the relation between language and cognition. Roughly speaking, iconicity refers to the non-arbitrary relation between the signifier and the signified of a linguistic sign. Currently, many scholars at home and abroad have published various articles on this subject, covering both the theoretical aspect and its applications, among which language teaching is the focus of iconicity study.In English teaching, there are three aspects that are very important but difficult to deal with. They are vocabulary teaching, grammar teaching and translation teaching. Thus how to make the teaching of these aspects more attractive, more inspiring and much easier to be accepted is the aim of all the teachers. As iconicity reveals the essential relationship between linguistic phenomena and human mind, it is more effective to use this theory to explain some language points. Based on the fundamental principles about iconicity, the author of this thesis makes a through research into iconicity and its use. Firstly, several detailed classifications are listed and illustrated by some examples according to the requirements of vocabulary teaching, grammar teaching and translation teaching. Secondly, by consulting the relevant materials about English teaching, the author extracts some difficult or confusable language points, and then applies the corresponding principles of iconicity to explain them, which is quite pertinent and applicable to specific language points and teaching problems.The theory of iconicity has far-reaching significance to English teaching. Thus, it is quite necessary to have a better understanding of this theory and use this theory consciously in teaching practice, which is also the aim of this thesis.