An introduction to metaphor and iconicity
樊正莉 魏俊轩（西南交通大学外国语学院  四川成都 610103）
Abstract：Linguists have gradually pay more attention to the study of cognitive linguistics, and iconicity is a main principle of cognitive linguistics. Here I’d like to givea brief introduction to iconicity and metaphor with regard to a International Conference.
Key words: iconicity; metaphor
  In Aug., 1992, the 15th Linguists’ International Conference was held in University Laval, Quebec, under which a discussing group entitled “Metaphor and Iconicity” discussed 7 articles. In July, 1994, Journal of Pragmatics included the 7 articles. Here I’d like to give a brief introduction to two of the articles.
  The two essays I’ d like to introduce include Masako Hiraga’s “Diagrams and Metaphors: Iconic aspects in Language” and Joanna Radwanska-Williams’ “The Problem of Iconicity”. These two summarize the common problems in iconicity, and take metaphor as one subcategory of iconicity to study. The second article focus on the theoretical illustration. The writer argues that the motivated language shows its iconicity in nature, thus the view of arbitrary language is a kind of illusive abstraction or idealization, so it can’t be taken as the basic principle of language structure. And this idea coincides with Chinese linguist, 许国璋(1991).
  Peirce’s theory of signs-semiotics is a concept of triadic relationship. He divided semiotics into three sub branches: grammar, logic and rhetoric. Among the three, one is between icon, index and symbol. About the detailed information about the three signs, one may go to 丁尔苏(1994). Here, I just want to say something about icon. According to Peirce, icon is a kind of sign, it describes its object by mans of describing the similarity between the sign and object. Any sign can become an icon when it shows the potential of representing another object because of its similarity to the object. Icon is further divided in to three categories: image, diagram, and metaphor. (And iconicity in diagram and metaphor is detailed discussed in the first article.) the author also argues that the relationship between image and the target object is comparatively simple, for example, landscape paintings and still life paintings are images; A diagram describes the relationship among the parts of an object through drawing an analogy among them, for example, a map; and a metaphor describes one object paralleling with another, thus shows the representing feature of the described object, for example, the sentence “the man is a lion” is a metaphor. In this sense, metaphor represents the highest and the most abstract iconicity.
   In the first essay, Higara, according to Peirce’s theory, divides iconicity into three subcategories: image, simulacrum, and metaphor. The essay does not discuss mapping iconicity, because this kind of iconicity is almost the phenomenon of onomatopoeia. It only discuss simulacrum and metaphor. As to the former, there are structure iconicity and relation iconicity. In the essay, the writer summarizes the following 6 structure iconicity.
1. Sequence iconicity: it refers to that the time sequence of the referred concepts should correspond with the described order. For example, we usually describe as “he came in the room and sat down”, not “he sat down and came in the room”.
2. Proximity iconicity: that is, the nearer the elements, the stronger the meaning they carry. For example: “he doesn’t think he will leave before tomorrow”, carries less negative power than “in his mind, he will not leave before tomorrow”. Because in the first sentence, the negative element “not” is farther from the verb “leave”.
3. Quantity iconicity: the more elements there are, the richer meaning they carry. The examples are the repetition and reduplication and of words or morphemes.
4. Symmetry iconicity: if the structure is symmetrical, the concepts described are symmetrical. For example, “the more one eats, the fatter he will become” is more symmetrical than “if he eats more, he will become fatter”.
5. Dissymmetry iconicity: for example, it is usually described as “the bike is beside the house”, not “the house is beside the bike”. Because here “bike” is a changeable element, and it is called “figure” in cignition and “topic” in speech analysis, while “house” is reference, and it is called “ground” in cognition and “comment” in speech analysis. Therefore, there is dissymmetrical simulacrum correspondence of topic/comment in speech and figure/ground in cognition.
6. Category iconicity: for example, “basic/non-basic” in cognition corresponds with “marked/unmarked” in language , such as singular form and plural form, here singular form is basic, unmarked, while plural form is non-basic, marked.
As for relation iconicity, the principle of it is that same form indicates same meaning and different forms indicate different meanings. English deixis like the, this, that, they, etc. and interrogative words like what, why, where, which, etc. are the examples of the first kind. And the latter: “waiting would have been a mistake” and “waiting has been a mistake” are different.
And the last metaphor iconicity is divided into three kinds: grammatical metaphor, conventional/prescriptive metaphor, and poetic metaphor.
Grammatical metaphor refers to the reflection from cognitive field into grammatical field. This metaphor is the same as Langacker’s concept of “imagery”. For example: a. He sent a letter to Susan. b. He sent Susan a letter. The grammatical metaphor iconicity of the two sentences is different, and there is a slice difference between the meanings. In sentence a, there is a “to”, showing the letter will pass a distance to arrive at Susan, while sentence b doesn’t take the meaning.
Conventional/prescriptive metaphor: for example, life is a game. In the sentence, the structure of the field we will understand—life, corresponds with the field we have understood—game, for example, life is like a game, in which there are some rules one has to obey, and in the end, you will win or fail.
Poetic metaphor: iconicity is a universal phenomenon in poetic language.
From the above two essays, we may form a picture of the general problems about iconicity in words and phrases. Also, we can figure out the kinds of metaphors as a category of iconicity. And as to the study on iconicity in lexis, we still have a long way to go.

参考文献
[1]丁尔苏.论皮尔士的符号三分法.四川外语学院学报>>1994.03
[2]廖秋忠.语言的范畴化：语言学理论中的典型.评介.国外语言学1991.04
[3]许国璋.许国璋论语言.北京： 外语教学与研究出版社.1991
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