English And Chinese Poetry Chapter Rhetoric Iconicity

The theory of iconicity,which can be traced back to ancient Greek,was put forward in contrast to that of arbitrariness and at that time,there was heated debate between Realism and Nominalism.It was first raised by the famous philosopher,the founder of the American semiotics—Peirce and later it caught the attention of cognitive linguists in their research work by which the theory of iconicity got further development. From the point of view of cognitive linguistics,iconicity refers to the existence of similarity between the form and its meaning.At present,the focus of attention was attached mainly in the levels of vocabulary and syntax but in fact it does exist in the textual level as well.Based on this perspective, the paper explores the characteristics of textual iconicity in both English and Chinese poetry from the angles of imagic iconicity,diagrammatic iconicity,and metaphorical iconicity.The paper consists of 3 chapters.Chapter one mainly deals with the definition of iconicity and its relationship with poetic language.Chapter two presents the origin and development of iconicity and its current studies.Chapter 3 expounds different types of iconicity as which is wide spread in English poetry and Chinese poetry as well.Taking poetries as data,the paper demonstrates that iconicity is characteristic of poetic text and as an important rhetorical device in poetic composition,it can make great contribution to our teaching,research and literary appreciation about poetry.