A Study Of Medical English Vocabulary Instruction Based On Iconicity

With the development of cognitive linguistics, the research on iconicity hasgained more attention in the late decades. Iconicity is proposed as opposite toarbitrariness, which is put forward by Saussure. It means that there is a non-arbitraryrelationship between the signifier and signified of the language sign. Iconicityindicates that language phenomenon has some inner-related relationship with thehuman mind. Besides, iconicity exists in every aspect of language, for instance, at thelexical level as well as the textual level. What’s more, the combination of iconicitytheory with the teaching activity is feasible and works positively.Since the features of medical vocabulary vary from the common words inspelling, pronunciation and other aspects, the teaching of medical vocabulary hasproved to be difficult. With the traditional teaching method, students spend largeamount of time and energy, but make little progress.The thesis aims at applying iconicity theory to medical vocabulary teaching. Thisthesis makes a detailed review of the background, definition, principles and the theoryrelated to the lexical level of iconicity. In addition, it also presents the situation ofmedical English teaching as well. The subjects are120juniors of He’s MedicalUniversity of Liaoning who specialize in clinical medicine. Instruments employed inthis experiment involve questionnaire and test. The data collected through theexperiment is analyzed via SPSS (16.0), and it shows that the teaching of medicalEnglish vocabulary on the basis of iconicity theory can help the students master the memorizing skills, enlarge their volume of vocabulary and inspire students’enthusiasm in language learning..Based on the above results and findings, the study provides some suggestionsand implications which are related to iconicity-based instruction in medical Englishvocabulary teaching for the further research.