（英语语言文学专业论文）现代汉语中的象似性及其修辞作用.pdf

descriptive chinese abstract i 摘 摘 要要 象似性理论作为认知语言学的一个重要理论，已经受到国内外语言学界的广泛关注。语言学家们对语言中的象似性现象做出了详尽的解释，归纳出了语言中的不同的象似性原则和特点，丰富和完善了象似性理论体系。随着象似性理论的发展, 国内也有不少学者运用象似性理论对现代汉语中的一些语法现象作了研究。本文主要回顾了现代汉语中的语音象似性，顺序象似性，距离象似性的研究情况。通过研究，表明汉语是一门象似性极高的语言。而他们的研究主要是集中在语法方面，其分析也只局限在词汇或句法层次。而语相象似性，数量象似性以及对称象似性几乎没有运用于现代汉语中，所以本文仅回顾了这三个象似性原则在国内的研究情况。而本文从修辞的角度来阐释象似性在现代汉语中的修辞作用。所以本文旨在通过现代汉语来探讨象似性及其修辞作用，这对于拓宽象似性及其修辞作用的研究具有一定的意义。 本文通过对现代汉语中的语音象似性，语相象似性，顺序象似性，距离象似性，数量象似性及其对称象似性六个典型的象似性原则及其修辞作用进行了分析，从而证明了在现代汉语中象似性是一种经常使用的非常重要的修辞手段。 另外，语言学家们对于象似性的研究，一直以来主要局限于词汇层面和句法层面，近期才有个别学者提出了语篇象似理论-从超句法的语篇层面研究象似性。基于此，本文试着从词汇、句法和语篇三个层面对六个象似性原则在现代汉语中的修辞作用进行了分析，较为全面地研究了象似性及其修辞作用，并且丰富了语篇象似性的研究。 本文的研究，一方面，通过现代汉语的例子证明了象似性是一种修辞手段，另一方面，为现代汉语和修辞学的研究提供了象似性的理论工具。 关键词关键词：象似性理论； 修辞手段； 现代汉语； 修辞作用 english abstract ii abstract iconicity theory, ranking as one of the important theories in cognitive linguistics, has been under hot discussion at home and abroad. with great efforts, linguists have described a great amount of iconic phenomena in language, generalized many iconicity principles and fully developed the theoretical system of iconicity. many chinese scholars have made some iconicity researches on modern chinese, mainly on sound iconicity, sequencing iconicity, distance iconicity. it is proved that the chinese language is an iconic language to great extent through studies. however, their researches are mostly from the grammatical angle and confined to vocabulary or syntax. and at the same time, this thesis has given a review of graphological iconicity, quantity iconicity and symmetrical iconicity researches in china, for there are hardly researches on these three iconicity principles in modern chinese. therefore, this thesis is an attempt to study iconicity on modern chinese from a rhetorical approach, that is, this thesis intends to study iconicity and its rhetorical effects in the untouched field of modern chinese. it will be of great significance to widen the scope of rhetoric study of iconicity. this thesis, from the angles of iconicity principles of sound, graphology, sequencing, distance, quantity and symmetry, explores the features and rhetorical effects of iconicity through modern chinese, which will verify that, in modern chinese, iconicity is an important rhetorical device. in addition, the earlier studies of iconicity mainly centered on the word and sentence levels. recently, a small number of linguists have put forward text iconicity theory, which states that iconicity also exists at the text level. based on this point, this study of iconicity and its rhetorical effects will be carried out at three levels of word, sentence and text. it will be of great significance to enrich the study of text iconicity. this thesis, on the one hand, promotes the study of rhetorical iconicity， on the other hand, it provides us with an iconic theoretical basis to study modern chinese and rhetoric. key words: iconicity theory; rhetorical device; modern chinese; rhetorical effect 湘湘 潭潭 大大 学学 学位论文原创性声明学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所取得的研究成果。除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其它个人或集体已经发表或撰写的成果作品。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，同意学校保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权湘潭大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。 涉密论文按学校规定处理。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 导师签名： 日期： 年 月 introduction 1 introduction 0.1 general purpose of this study iconicity, one of the research areas in the cognitive linguistic field, has been attracting more and more attention and interest since the 1980s and is currently under hot study. this is well reflected in the fact that more than six international symposiums have been exclusively on the study of iconicity (wang yin, 2001:332) and more and more articles and books on iconicity research have been and are being published. with the development of iconicity theory, many chinese scholars have made some researches on modern chinese. but they are mainly from a grammatical point of view to discuss iconicity, in this thesis, we shall make an attempt to discuss iconicity in modern chinese from a rhetorical approach. to put it in another way, on the basis of the theory of cognitive linguistics on iconicity, we shall attempt to connect the study of iconicity to rhetoric, concentrating on the rhetorical effects of iconicity, which is frequently employed as a rhetorical device in modern chinese writing. in this thesis, we shall explore how iconicity is frequently employed as an important rhetorical device in modern chinese at the three linguistic levels of word, sentence and text, especially the last two levels. and we shall discuss the iconicity from the angles of the six typical iconic principles of sound iconicity, graphological iconicity, sequencing iconicity, distance iconicity, quantity iconicity, and symmetrical iconicity and the rhetorical effects produced respectively. 0.2 framework of this thesis considerable linguistic research in the twentieth century has shown that iconicity operates at every level of language (phonology, morphology, syntax) and in practically every known language (lu weizhong, 2003a:7). in this thesis, we shall examine and analyze iconicity at the three levels of word, sentence and text in modern chinese. this thesis is mainly composed of nine parts. the first part, as the introductory part, states the general purpose of this thesis, and provides a general framework for the thesis and describes the methodology. chapter one, we shall examine the definition and classification of iconicity, and then give a brief history of iconicity, including the iconicity researches both at home and abroad, and especially iconicity researches on modern chinese. from chapter two to chapter seven these six chapters are the main body of this thesis. introduction 2each chapter is composed of four sections. the first section, we shall give a history of iconicity researches in modern chinese. and the second section is the comments on their studies. then the third section is devoted to the rhetorical effects of six typical iconicity principles, that is, sound iconicity, graphological iconicity, sequencing iconicity, distance iconicity, quantity iconicity and symmetrical iconicity at the three linguistic levels of word, sentence and text, especially the last two levels. and the last section is a summary of each chapter. finally comes the concluding part, which consists of a summary of the thesis, a description of the conclusions drawn from the thesis, and a discussion of the significance, limitations and future prospects of this thesis. 0.3 methodology cognitive linguistics is based on mans experience, perception and conceptualization of the world, the study of which is difficult to be carried out through direct observation at present due to the lack of the technological equipments. hence, the study of cognitive linguistics tends to adopt indirect methods of analysis, through natural observation and introspection of the linguistic phenomena (zhao yanfang, 2001:14). since iconicity falls within the domain of cognitive linguistics, correspondingly the study of iconicity needs to adopt the same research methodology as cognitive linguistics. in this thesis, we shall try to deal with language iconicity in modern chinese and their respective rhetorical effects through analyzing a large quantity of modern chinese words, sentences and texts. chapter 1 literature review 3 chapter 1 literature review 1.1 iconicity theory iconicity, which ranks as one of the important research areas in the field of modern cognitive linguistics, has been under intensive discussion since the past decades. a great number of studies on iconicity have been done; many important conclusions have been drawn. here, we shall introduce some basic knowledge of iconicity theory, such as its definition, its classification and a brief history of iconicity both at home and abroad. 1.1.1 definition of iconicity what is iconicity? “iconicity as a semiotic notion refers to a natural resemblance or analogy between the form of a sign (the signifier, be it a letter or sound, a word, a structure of words, or even the absence of a sign) and the object or concept (the signified) it refers to in the world or rather in our perception of the world”（lu weizhong, 2003a:12-13）. iconicity is originally a semiotic concept, charles sanders peirce, the founder of american praticalism and semiotics, introduces it in the framework of his trichotomy theory of signs. peirce identifies three kinds of signsicon, index and symbol, which differ from each other in terms of the degree of arbitrariness. according to the peircean theory, iconicity is a term which referred to the natural relationship existing between signifiers and signifieds (wang yin, 1999). conceived in strictly peircean terms, iconicity is one of the three relationships in which a representamen (expression) may stand for its object (content or referent) and which a representamen may be taken as the “ground” for forming a sign. more precisely, iconicity has been variously conceived as a similarity, or identity between the expression and the content of a sign, or as a particular variety of conventional coding. or in the words of shen jiaxuan (1993:2) and zhao yanfang (2001:155), it refers to a necessary or motivated relation between the signifier and the signified in the language, that is, between linguistic form and content. yan chensong (1997) puts forward that language structure, to some degree, reflects the world structure that people experience. wang yin (1999) gives us a comparatively complete definition of iconicity. he defines the iconicity of signs as the similarity between their sounds, or forms, or structures of signs and their signifieds. his definition can be illustrated from the following three aspects: 1. sound aspect. there is a natural relationship between the sound of certain letter or word and its referent. 2. form aspect. there are similarities between writing forms of some letters and their meanings. 3. chapter 1 literature review 4structure aspect. language structures directly mirror peoples conceptual structures and, to some degree, reflect the world structure that people experience. and his definition is widely accepted in cognitive linguistic field. in a summary, we can see that iconicity of language refers to the necessary or motivated relation between the signifier and the signified of language sign, that is, between linguistic form and its meaning. moreover, language forms or structures reflect the structure of experience, which is itself a mirror of the structure of the world. according to wang yins definition, we know there are different types of iconic phenomena in language. so, it is very natural for us to come to the classification of iconicity in the following part. 1.1.2 classification of iconicity the classification of iconicity derives from the peircean trichotomy of the sign, which divides signs in relation to their objects into three types: icons, index, and symbols. “an icon is defined as a sign which represents an object mainly by its similarity to that object (pictures, portraits, and realistic paintings are obvious examples); an index as a sign which represents its object by its existential relation to the object (weather signs, symptoms of disease); and a symbol as a sign which signifies its object by a law or a convention (e.g. the use of word bird in english to refer to a feathered vertebrate)” (hiraga, 1994:6). three types of signs (icons, index, and symbols) thus operate in different ways: icon by means of resemblance, index by means of contiguity, and symbol by means of arbitrary association. icons are further divided into three subtypes: images, diagrams and metaphors, depending on the similarity relation. the simplest is that image, in which the form is physically similar in some way to the meaning, is imitative in some general sense (e.g. onomatopoeic words). the diagram is a more complex type. in peirces (1985:105-107) words, diagrams are icons “which represent the relations of the parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own partsmany diagrams resemble their objects not at all in looks; it is only in respect to the relations of their likeness consists.” in the third type, which he calls metaphor, meaning likeness rests on the parallelism between signs (marge e. landsberg 1995:191). corresponding to the classification of icon, iconicity falls into three main types: imagic iconicity, diagrammatic iconicity, and metaphorical iconicity. in imagic iconicity, according to which the sign evinces an immediately perceptible similarity to its object of reference, there is a tendency for the sounds or writings of given segments of language to imitate their meanings. such correspondence may be divided into two types: sound symbolism (onomatopoeic and phonaesthesia) and visual symbolism (graphological iconicity) (m. nanny &o.fisher chapter 1 literature review 51999:xxii). in diagrammatic iconicity, a direct, concrete relation between the signifier and the signified is missing; instead there exists an iconic link between the relation at the level of the signifier and the relation at the level of the signified. according to lu weizhong (2003b), diagrammatic iconicity consists of two types: structural diagrammatic iconicity and relational diagrammatic iconicity. both of them are roughly equivalent to haimans “motivation” and “isomorphism”. the differences between these two subtypes are as follows: “structural diagrammatic iconicity”, which is a structural analogy, tends to deal with the correspondence between the structure or content of the linguistic form and the structure of peoples conceptualization; whereas “relational diagrammatic iconicity”, which is a relational analogy, tends to deal with a correspondence between the linguistic form and the linguistic meaning. it means that sameness of form signals sameness of meaning and difference of form signals difference meaning. zhao yanfang (2001:160-161) lists five small types of structural diagram: linear iconicity, proximity iconicity, quantitative iconicity, symmetric iconicity and asymmetric iconicity. metaphorical iconicity, according to peirce, “is mediated iconicity, suggesting that the ideas conveyed by the sign and the idea of its object are mediated by a third idea” (noth, 2001). according to hiraga (1994:6-19), metaphorical iconicity can be investigated in terms of grammatical metaphor, conventional metaphor, and poetic metaphor (lu weizhong, 2003b:17). thus, we can summarize the above classification of iconicity with the following figure. figure1 classification of iconicity chapter 1 literature review 6it should be clear that the above classification of iconicity is based on the studies of many scholars, such as, haiman(1985), hiraga(1994) wang yin(1999) and lu weizhong(2003b, 2003c). it is designed to be slightly different from other classifications in terms of terminology and the number of types and subtypes in order to make our study more coherent. from the above definition of metaphorical iconicity, more factors are involved. in this thesis, we shall argue iconicity in form as a rhetorical device. hence, we shall restrict our study to the first two types: imagic iconicity and diagrammatical iconicity，that is, sound iconicity, graphological iconicity, sequencing iconicity, distance iconicity, quantity iconicity and symmetrical iconicity. 1.2 iconicity research in the west iconicity has been hotly studied by linguists and philosophers, especially after the cognitive linguistics came into being. just as every science or every branch of study is in part a development of what went on before, the issue of iconicity is by no means an exception. therefore, a brief history of iconicity will be introduced in this section. iconicity, had not been widely accepted until the modern cognitive linguistics came into being, because, ferdinand de saussure (2001:67), the father of modern linguistics states “the first principle of the nature of the language sign”, which says that “the linguistic sign is arbitrary”. since then, arbitrariness has been viewed as the basic principle in the regime of modern linguistics, and iconic properties of language have been disrega rded or considered as marginal phenomena, e.g. onomatopoeic words. contrary to the saussurean idea that language is fundamentally arbitrary, considerable linguistic researches carried out in the late twentieth century have proved that iconicity operates at every level of language and in practically at every level known language. iconicity, at the very beginning, is a semiotic concept from c.s.peircean trichotimization of signs, and then comes a resurgence of interest of his trichotimization, with studies by jacobson(1965), chafe(1970), bolinger(1977), haiman(1983,1985), givon(1989,1990) and many others. roman jacobson (1965) challenges the arbitrariness of language and believes that iconicity is ubiquitous in language. by illustrating caesars famous words “i came, i saw, i conquered.”, he proves the iconic relationship between the word order and the temporal order. john haiman (1983, 1985) makes an elaborate and systemic study of iconicity in his publications of natural syntax and iconicity. later on, investigations on iconicity, ranging from sound chapter 1 literature review 7symbolism, vocabulary, syntax, to rhetoric, are dealt with by such researchers as anderson(1998), fonagy(1999), givon(1985,1994), greenberg(1995), nanny(1999), newmeyer(1992), simone(1994,1995), sweetser(2002) and so on. today, based on the rapidly developing cognitive science, iconicity, which has not been initiated by cognitive linguistics, has benefited from being put on a cognitive basis and is now flourishing all the more. 1.3 iconicity research in china closely following the western linguists, linguists in our country have also done a lot in the study of iconicity. lu guoqiang (1983), wang