（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）象似性的语用分析.pdf

pragmatic analysis of iconicity iv 摘 要 摘 要 象似性指的是语言结构和所表达的概念或经验结构之间的映照关系， 在最近 几十年里， 它一直是认知研究中的一个热门话题。 象似性研究着重强调语言符号 的可释性和理据性， 该理论是对索绪尔的语言符号任意性支配说的最大挑战， 同 时也是一个有力补充。 对语言符号象似性的研究有利于人们对语言的本质以及人 类自身的认知状态和特征作进一步的了解。 本文尝试运用一些语用理论来分析语言象似性现象， 希望在语言结构和概念 结构之间建立一些相对应的联系。本研究在语用学的框架下，结合语用学中的礼 貌原则、会话含义理论、间接言语行为理论以及关联理论，对象似性研究中被广 泛接受的四个原则，即数量象似性、顺序象似性、标记象似性和距离象似性进行 诠释。分析发现，对数量象似性、顺序象似性、标记象似性和距离象似性的语言 选择主要是基于礼貌、间接表达、关联程度、会话含义的丰富性、思想和现实的 距离、心理和事件认知顺序等等语用考虑。具体说来，数量象似性反映交际一方 的语符量和礼貌程度、 会话含义的丰富性以及与交际另一方的社会距离之间的象 似关系。顺序象似性反映语言符号的顺序和与时间、空间、认知以及因果关系之 间的象似关系。标记象似性部分映照语言符号的标记性与额外意义、处理努力、 语境效果和关联程度的波动，以及间接言语行为之间的象似关系。距离象似性是 选择使用远指或近指指示语与所体现的社会心理距离之间、 以及语符距离和概念 距离之间的关系的反映。 关键词：关键词：语用分析；数量象似性；顺序象似性；标记象似性；距离象似性；语 言结构；概念结构 pragmatic analysis of iconicity ii abstract iconicity refers to the resemblance between linguistic structures and conceptual or experiential structures. it has been a popular topic for cognitive researches in recent decades. iconicity researches place primary emphasis on the interpretability and motivations of linguistic signs, which constitute a great challenge as well as a good complement to saussures classic theory of arbitrariness. exploration of linguistic iconicity is significant in enhancing peoples understanding of the essence of language as well as human own cognitive states and features. this thesis attempts to apply some pragmatic theories to the analysis of the phenomenon of linguistic iconicity, hoping to establish some correspondences between linguistic structures and conceptual structures. four commonly seen iconicity phenomena, namely, quantity iconicity, sequencing iconicity, markedness iconicity and distance iconicity, are interpreted within the framework of pragmatic theories constituted by politeness principle, conversational implicature theory, indirect speech act theory and relevance theory. it is found that the linguistic choice of quantity, sequencing, markedness and distance iconicity is based much on the pragmatic considerations of politeness, indirectness, degree of relevance, richness of implicature, mental and realistic distances, physical and cognitive sequences of events and so on. concretely, quantity iconicity reflects the iconic relationship between the quantity of words on one side and the degree of politeness, the richness of conversational implicature and social distance on the other. sequencing iconicity reflects the iconic relationship between the linear sequence of words and temporal, spatial, cognitive and cause-effect sequences. markedness iconicity partly echoes the iconic relationship between the markedness of words and extra implicature, the fluctuations of processing effort and contextual effect, degree of relevance as well as the indirectness of speech act. distance iconicity is a reflection of the iconic relationship between choice of distal or proximal deixis and social-psychological distance, between linguistic distance and conceptual distance. 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 iii key words: pragmatic analysis, quantity iconicity, sequencing iconicity, markedness iconicity, distance iconicity, linguistic structures, conceptual structures 中南民族大学中南民族大学 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 何其他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。本人授权中南民族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。 本学位论文属于 1、保密，在_年解密后适用本授权书。 2、不保密。 （请在以上相应方框内打“” ） 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 导师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 i acknowledgements my gratitude is due, first and foremost, to my supervisor, professor xu ju, for her enlightening guidance during the preparation of this thesis, for her constructive suggestions and constant encouragement during the writing of this thesis and for her patience and generosity in spending her valuable time revising it meticulously. without her help, my paper could not have been its present shape. moreover, professor xu jus earnestness and seriousness towards academic researches moved me emotionally and affected me deeply as well. i have really benefited a lot from the whole process of writing this thesis. i would like to express my deepest gratitude and sincere appreciation to my teachers in south-central university for nationalities, professor huang chongzhen, professor yuan xuefen, professor zhang liyu and professor lu wanying, whose instructive teaching have contributed much to my academic concepts and broadened my eyesight, and who have given me great help and constant encouragement during my study in the postgraduate program. my gratitude also goes to my family and classmates for their love, encouragement and support. last but not least, my sincere thanks must go to those authors whose works and papers have benefited me a lot. 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 1 chapter 1 introduction 1.1 the definition of iconicity the notion of “iconicity” originated from the well-known semiotic trichotomy put forward by charles sanders peirce (1960). peirces division of signs into symbol, icon and index and his further division of icons into image, diagram and metaphor provide a semiotic foundation for the study of iconicity. iconicity is a polysemous term, which is basically used in semiotic and linguistic senses and it is defined otherwise at the same time. semiotically, iconicity refers to a natural resemblance or analogy between the form of a sign (i.e. 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 (i.e. the signified) it refers to in the real world or rather in our perception of the world (peirce, 1940: 156). linguistically, iconicity denotes the natural relationship between linguistic signs and their referents (saeed, 2001: 5). so far, no complete agreement has been reached on the definition of iconicity. verschueren (1999:97), from the pragmatic perspective, defines iconicity as “a property of non-arbitrary similarity between form and meaning”. croft (2000:164-171) defines iconicity as “the parallelism between the relations among parts in linguistic structure and relations among parts in the structure of what is signified”, that is, “the structure of language reflects in some degree the structure of experience, i.e. the structure of the world. haiman characterizes iconicity as “a set of signs whose meaning in some crucial way resembles their form” (anderson, 1998:109). hopper (2005:27) regards iconicity as “the property of similarity between one item and another”. according to newmeyer, linguistic structure can iconically reflect conceptual structure and thus “iconicity roughly embodies the idea that the form, length, complexity or interrelationship of the elements in the concept, experience, or pragmatic analysis of iconicity 2 communicative strategy that the representation encodes” (1998:114). some chinese linguists extend the notion of iconicity to the perspective of syntax. shen jiaxuan (1999), as a representative of them, claims that language is iconic in that linguistic structure, especially syntactic structure or even syntactic rule, is non-arbitrary and motivated, that is, there is some natural relation between syntactic structure and conceptual structure. some other chinese linguists attempt to define iconicity in a unified way. wang yin (1999), for instance, insists that iconicity indicates the resemblance between the sound, form or structure of a linguistic sign and its referent. “referent” here may be an object in the real world or an abstract concept, alternatively, the structure of the world, concept or experience. in conclusion, iconicity refers to the non-arbitrary relation between a linguistic sign and its referent, between the signifier and the signified of a linguistic sign, between syntactic structure and semantic content, and between linguistic structure and conceptual structure. 1.2 arbitrariness or iconicity: a linguistic controversy from ancient greece to present time, the debate on whether linguistic signs are arbitrary or iconic has never ceased and has been a constant theme for linguistic inquiry into the nature of linguistic sign. this debate became even fiercer after saussures masterpiece a course in general linguistics (1916) was publicized, in which arbitrariness is asserted to be the most fundamental design feature of linguistic sign. arbitrariness-iconicity debate is a revival of conventionalism-naturalism dispute of the later middle ages, which, in turn, is a revival of nominalism-realism debate of the ancient greece and rationalism-empiricism dispute of the early modern period. although these views are contrastive, they are all based upon a common assumption that there exists a clear, integral, and autonomous world. they all claim that there is a correspondence between the word and the individual entity in the real world, but they 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 3 are in disagreement on what kind of correspondence exists. realism claims an intrinsic association while nominalism claims no such an association or inherent connection at all. plato was the representative of naturalists, whose cratylus (2003), a dialogue among cratylus, hermogenes and socrates, represents his ideas about names and things. in the dialogue, plato points out that names reveal the essence of things, and there is natural connection between names and things. aristotle, platos student, the representative conventionalist, notes “there can be no natural connection between the sound of any language and the things signified” (chandler, 2002: 26). in brief, the debate is essentially whether or not linguistic signs bear an iconic linkage to the reality described. the long-lasting debate has approximately gone through three stages: controversies of the early period, arbitrariness-dominant period, and iconicity-dominant period. 1.2.1 the early period (ancient greece- the end of 19th century) more than 2000 years ago, there were two contrastive views in linguistic field about property of linguistic signs. one is called aristotelian paradigm and the other is platonic paradigm. the former holds that language and reality are quite independent of each other and there is no resemblance between them while the latter believes that language and reality resemble each other to some extent. aristotle, as the representative conventionalist, insists that the names of things are justified by nothing else but social conventions. by contrast, his teacher plato, a naturalist, argues that human language originates from the onomatopoeia and that the name is the imitation of the sound of thing it represents and the person who designates the name always uses sound to imitate the object he address (gao mingkai, 1995: 343). to him, there is a natural connection between the form and meaning of the linguistic sign. philosophers of byzantine period from the 8th to the 9th century a.d. held that icons are a direct reflection of primitive prototypes. what the icon makers need to do is just to record those primitive prototypes in written forms. to these philosophers, the relation between meaning and form is unavoidably iconic, just like the relation pragmatic analysis of iconicity 4 between the seal and the print it makes or the body and the shadow it projects (slobin, 1985: 221). the heated argument on the nature of linguistic signs didnt stop until saussure period, when the conventionalists have got the upper hand of the naturalists temporarily. 1.2.2 arbitrariness-dominant period (1910s-1960s) the first half of the 20th century witnessed the popularity of the hypothesis about the arbitrariness of linguistic signs. ferdinand de saussure (1916), the father of modern linguistics, claims that language is a system of signs linguistic sign is radically arbitrary and the form of most words is linked to what they signify only by convention; the relationship between form and meaning is in fact arbitrary (ungerer, 2001). saussures view on the arbitrary nature of linguistic sign was so influential that it remained unchallenged for more than half a century. even today, arbitrariness is still considered by many linguists as one of the most important design features of language. chomsky, the representative of formalist linguists, inherits and develops saussures viewpoint of arbitrariness he treats natural language which a child is born with as an innate, autonomous formal system, independent of other human cognitive systems. “autonomy”, as proposed by chomsky as a linguistic feature, is a re-expression of “arbitrariness” and “conventionality” in saussures original terms. peirce, the originator of american pragmatism and semiotics, formulates his own model of signs, in which he divides signs in general sense into three kinds (i.e. icon, index and symbol) and uses iconicity” to refer to the natural relationship between the signifier and the signified of signs. however, due to saussures great influence in the linguistic field at that time, peirces proposal didnt attract enough attention from others. 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 5 1.2.3 iconicity-dominant period (1960s-) although the aristotle-saussure theoretical model occupies a dominating position for a long time, to the second half of the 20th century, with the development of cognitive linguistics, the idea about the iconicity of linguistic signs was recovered again. this view of iconicity originated from humboldt (1836), wittgenstein (1922) /sn-/, as in snake，snail, sneak, snoop, is associated with the slow movement of crawling; /-ash/, as in bash, clash, crash, dash, slash, is associated with fierce or violent actions; /-url/ or /irl/, as in curl, furl, hurl, purl, swirl, twirl, whirl, indicates the movement of spinning; /fl-/, as in flare, flash, flicker, has something to do with the moving light; /sl-/, as in slide, slick, sleek, slippery, slope, slither, sludge, has something to do with the movement of slipping. 2.2.2 morphological iconicity lu guoqiang (1983) (2) the relation between these constituents (wu sijing, 2006). morphological motivation can help us infer the meaning of a word from the meanings of its constituent morphemes. 2.2.3 semantic iconicity as is indicated by lu guoqiang (1983), semantic iconicity, also called semantic motivation, is a kind of mental association established between the original meaning of a word and its extensional meaning or metaphorical meaning. for instance, words like bonnet, coat (2) less predictable information will be given by more coding material; (3) more important information will be given by more coding material. ungerer maximize benefit to other; generosity maxim: minimize benefit to self; maximize cost to self; approbation maxim: minimize dispraise of other; maximize praise of other; modesty maxim: minimize praise of self; maximize dispraise of self; agreement maxim: minimize disagreement between self and other; maximize agreement between self and other; sympathy maxim: minimize antipathy between self and other; maximize sympathy between self and other. politeness principle has something in common with iconicity principle. it will be applied to analyze the iconic relationship between the quantity of words on one side and the degree of politeness on the other. pragmatic analysis of iconicity 16 3.2 theories of conversational implicature as a contrast to conventional implicature which is simply attached by convention to a particular lexical item or expression, conversational implicature depends on particular context of language use for its inference and is calculated on the basis of some pragmatic principles as follows: 3.2.1 grices co-operative principle grice noticed that in daily conversation people do not usually say things directly but tend to imply them. he coined the term “implicature” to refer to such implied meaning. and he made an exploration to the question “how people manage to convey implicature, which is not explicitly expressed”. according to grice, in conducting a conversation, the participants must first of all be willing to cooperate; otherwise, it would be impossible for them to carry on the talk. this general principle is called the cooperative principle, abbreviated as cp, which is expressed as follows: make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. grice specifies the cp further with the following four maxims: the maxim of quantity (i) make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purpose of the exchange (ii) do not make your contribution more informative than is required. the maxim of quality try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically: (i) do not say what you believe to be false (ii) do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. the maxim of relation make your contribution relevant. 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 17 the maxim of manner be perspicuous, and specifically. (i) avoid obscurity; (ii) avoid ambiguity; (iii) be brief; (iv) be orderly. (levinson, 1983: 102) its interesting and important to note that those maxims are not always strictly observed. rather, they are often violated or “flouted”, to use grices term. according to grice, sometimes speakers deliberately and overtly violate some maxims of co-operative principle just for the purpose of attracting the addressees special attention to his communicative intentionexploitation of particularized implicature. 3.2.2 horns q- and r-principles horn (1984) proposes to reduce grices four maxims to two mutually conditioned principles: the q-principle and the r-principle: the q-principle (he