Poetic Iconicity In Cognitive Poetics

Since Peirce systematically introduced iconicity, cognitive linguists have foundthat there are large amount of iconic phenomena between linguistic forms andmeanings, linguistic structures and the ways we think and other aspects existing inlanguage through exploration of different languages. Therefore, it posts a threat to thearbitrariness principle of language sign which is put forward by Saussure. Literature,as a kind of ideology and a means of human beings’ life, is used to state the theme,utter the author’s attitude or view, and express the author’s feeling. Does iconicphenomenon exist in literary text? Cognitive linguists have not yet concentrated on it,but they have no need to reinvent the wheel because poetic iconicity in CognitivePoetics has ploughed upon this field and got some achievements.This thesis firstly introduces some foreign experts’ and scholars’ researches onpoetic iconicity and finds out different features between iconicity in cognitive poeticsand Cognitive Linguistic. Then, through a case study, the author attempts to find outthe insufficient generative mechanism of poetic iconicity and add figure-groundtheory to make up the insufficiency, and meanwhile enlarge the explanatory power ofpoetic iconicity. Additionally, we try to jump out of the poetic text and apply poeticiconicity to the novel text and demonstrate that poetic iconicity also takes effect innovel.Through this thesis, we can know the following three aspects. Firstly, iconicityand metaphor are inseparable and can supplement each other. Secondly, owing to theoriginal forms such as meter, rhyme, enjambment, and concrete pattern and so on, thereaders can find out the aesthetic meaning in terms of above original forms. Therefore,it is beneficial for interpreting the various meanings by means of reminding readers ofpaying close attention to poetic forms. Thirdly, as a kind of art form, poetry as well asother art forms such as paint will express the poet’s feeling. Through the iconicanalysis of poem, that is, iconic relation between form and feeling, readers canexperience the poet’s temporal feeling as if they are on the scene by means of metaphor and blending generative mechanisms, thereby, the poem achieves poeticiconicity. However, with the development of society, the poetic forms vary fromepochs and countries. For instance, the British poems in Renaissance are differentfrom the modern English poems. The Chinese ancient poems are distinct from modernpoems. The Japanese Haiku is hardly adopted in creating poem. When the metaphorand blending generative mechanisms are used to analyze some famous poem such asIn a Station of the Metro which can achieve poetic iconicity, they cannot take effect.By adding the figure-ground theory to the generative mechanism, we can find that bymeans of this new generative mechanism the poem can achieve poetic iconicity. In theend, this thesis attempts to apply poetic iconicity to the analysis of novel and discoverthat novel can achieve poetic iconicity by means of metaphor, blending andfigure-ground generative mechanisms.