A Study Of The Language Features In As I Lay Dying In Terms Of Iconicity

For the relationship between a signified and a signifier, there exsit two differentcognitive patterns which are arbitrariness and iconicity from the ancient Greek times.The famous linguist Saussure proposed that in the system of language, the relationshipbetween a signified and a signifier is arbitrary and non-motivated, and this viewdominates the whole linguistic system and is the basement of the linguistic system.Under the influence of Saussure’s theory, many linguists have offered different ideasboth at home and abroad. The linguists of Structuralism have made the depth ofresearch from the levels of sound, word, clause and so on, while cognitive linguistics,psycholinguistics and functional linguistics have put forward and confirmed from thedifferent perspectives that: the form of language has a close linking with its meaning,and language is the result of being made in real world through human cognitiveprocessing. Language structure reflects people’s cognitive structure and conceptualstructure, that is to say, the form and content of language have a necessary connection.A signified and a signifier must have a necessary connection, and the relationshipbetween a signified and a signifier can be motivated. They have motivations. Thenatural relationship between a signified and a signifier is called iconicity. There aremany iconicities at the levels of sound, word, clause and text.William Faulkner is one of the greatest American modern writers in the20thcentury. He wrote19long novels in all and nearly hundreds of stories in his lifetime,among which15are long novels and many stories took place in YoknapatawphaCounty. Faulkner was deeply influenced by the customs of traditional family in South.His works contain the specific Southern sense of humor, contradiction of relationbetween black people and white people as well as other sensitive issues. He vividlydepicts the image of Southern people. As I Lay Dying is one of the famous novels,which, with other novels, made him win the Nobel Prize in1949.The theory of iconicity means the linguistic signs have the iconic phenomenonwith the referents at the levels of phonology, morphology, syntax and text. This thesis will analyze the language features of As I Lay Dying in order to point out thaticonicity plays an important role in this novel and obtains some unique stylistic effects,from phonological iconicity, morphological iconicity, syntactic iconicity and textualiconicity. At the level of phonology, language features are mainly reflected in theapplication of the onomatopoeia, phonaesthesia, end rhyme and non-verbalmodification. Onomatopoeia means words which are made by imitating some naturalsounds such as moaning, murmuring to depict the picture vividly. Phonaesthesiameans one sound or a set of sounds are associated with the meaning. The names in AsI Lay Dying have some relation with their sounds, such as Burdren and Burden. Oneof the greatest characteristics of language in this novel is the usage of end rhyme. Inthis novel, end rhyme is used in many places. Non-verbal modification means in theconversation, the tone, language speed, repetition are related to certain meanings. Inthe dialogue of As I Lay Dying, non-verbal modification is very obvious.At the level of morphology, morphological iconicity means the meaning of oneword can be obtained by analyzing the morphology of the word. Language featuresare mainly reflected in the reduplication, combination, paronomasia, dialects, slangand colloquial words. Language in this novel is expressed by many different forms,such as the repetition of an action, a frequentative sound and so on. Combination isvery obvious in this novel, and many combined words are largely used by Faulkner,such as stiff-legged, spine-jolting. Paronomasia is mainly reflected in the aspect of themeaning of the characters’ names. Dialects, slang and colloquial words can be seenalmost everywhere.At the level of syntax, four principles which are the principle of distance,principle of order, principle of quantity and principle of markedness will be illustratedto analyze the language features. The four principles of syntactic iconicity provide aguide for us to understand the sentence structure of As I Lay Dying. Iconicity ofdistance can be defined as language sign is iconic in conceptual distance. The closerthe conceptual distance is, the higher stating the consistent information is. Languagefeatures are mainly reflected in the indirect speech, euphemism, ellipsis and personaltransformation. The dialogues among the characters, such as the dialogue between Anse and Tull, are expressed by indirect speech, euphemism, ellipsis and personaltransformation.Principle of order iconicity is described as the order of syntactic componentsreflects the order of their actual status or the events which occurred. The principle oforder iconicity can be discussed from two aspects: iconicity in basic sentence orderand semantic principle of linear order. Language features of this novel are mainlyreflected in expressing sequential events, expressing simultaneity, expressing emotionand expressing the process of cognition. When the language of the novel demonstratesthe events, expressing sequential events and expressing simultaneity are very obvious.When we express the language of the characters, expressing emotion and expressingthe process of cognition are outstanding.Quantity Iconicity can be defined as the quantity of linguistic units in directproportion to the quantity of concept and the complexity they convey, and inverseproportion to the measure. Haiman put forward the term of “the iconicity of length”which means the length of an utterance may correspond to the extent to which itconveys new or unfamiliar information. Language features of this novel are mainlyreflected in the repetition, parallelism and interior monologue. Many repetitionsappear in the novel’s language, no matter the repetition of the characters’ actions orthe repetition of the words. The parallelism which shows the characters’ feeling isalso natural. Interior monologue is always presented by the language length of thecharacters.Markedness iconicity refers to the order from unmarkedness to markednesscorresponding to the natural order of cognition. When we use markedness languageinstead of unmarkedness language, there will be deviation, and then the outstandingeffect will appear. This will make the language with stylistic effect. Language featuresof this novel are mainly reflected in the hendiadys, reflexive pronouns, rhetoricalquestion, oxymoron and exaggeration. The characters’ language in different time anddifferent places express the markedness iconicity.At the level of text, language features are mainly reflected in the iconicity of timeseries, iconicity of spatial sequence and iconicity of mental activity. Meanwhile, the thesis will analyze this novel from the iconicity of narrative angle, the iconicity oftheme, the iconicity of characters and the iconicity of environment to sum up thelanguage arts in As I Lay Dying and reflect Faulkner’s writing techniques.