A Study On Interaction Between Schema And Iconicity In Discourse Coherence

Schema theory is considered as an important theory in cognitive psychology. Afundamental principle of schema theory assumes that a written discourse does notcarry meaning by itself, but just serves as the direction for readers, enabling them toknow how to extract or construct the meaning with their previous knowledge.Therefore, it is found that coherence is not an intrinsic characteristic of a discoursebut a concept related to the cognition of discourse receivers. The achievement ofdiscourse coherence, to a large extent, depends on whether readers possess ofactivating the relevant schemata or not.Iconicity is an important subject in cognitive linguistics, which is another basicfeature of language relative to arbitrariness. Iconicity is of great significance for theresearch on the relation between language and cognition. Human cognitionparticipates in the process of human understanding of the objective world actively, solanguage does not directly reflect the objective world, but reflects various conceptsor conceptual structures of human mind that are formed in the process of cognizingthe objective world. The iconicity theory exists between the signifier and thesignified, and there is a necessary connection between the language form and content,namely the relationship between the two can be on the same line regularly. ShenJiaxuan (1993) points out that iconicity is relative to arbitrariness, and it refers to thenatural relationship between the signifier and the signified, and the combination ofthe two can be demonstrated and is motivated.The schema is the knowledge structure in which the known concepts orinformation are stored in the mind. A large number of theories prove that iconicityhas the expected effect. Through the interaction of the input information and iconicity,the schema is activated, and the vacancy is filled, thereby discourse understanding iscompleted. On the contrary, if the reader does not have the corresponding schema orthe reader has the corresponding schema without providing enough iconicity thoughts to make schemata work, the reader is unable to complete the discourseunderstanding. Therefore, schema and iconicity are cognitive structures that areformed and developed in the process of the interaction between human and theenvironment, embodying the principle of human cognition. Mastering therelationship between schema and iconicity is conductive to the discourseunderstanding.On reviewing the previous studies on schema, iconicity and the relationshipbetween them and discourse coherence and relating studies, the thesis is an attemptto unfold the interaction mechanisms of schema and iconicity and discuss the effectof the mechanism on discourse coherence.