The Motivated Sign

This volume, a sequel to Form Miming Meaning (1999), offers a selection of papers given at the second international symposium on iconicity (Amsterdam 1999). In the light of semiotic, linguistic and literary theory the studies gathered here investigate how iconicity works on all levels of language, in literary texts and other forms of verbal discourse. They investigate, among other subjects, the semiotic foundations of iconicity, the role played by iconicity in language evolution and in the way words are positioned syntactically. Special consideration is given to the iconic nature of metaphor and the ‘mise en abyme’, to iconically motivated punctuation and other typographic matters such as the manipulation of colour, fonts and spacing in advertising and in poetry. Other studies show how iconicity influences Shakespeare’s rhetoric, the structural design of Margaret Atwood’s writings and the changing fashions in fictional landscape description. Thus, these analyses of ‘the motivated sign’ represent yet another strong challenge to “Saussure’s dogma of arbitrariness” (Jakobson).

Oana Jan, University of Rouen, France in Linguist List Vol-12-2854. Wed Nov 14 2001:
The Motivated Sign: Iconicity in Language and Literature 2 is a definite success for the researchers in language iconicity. It should also prove extremely useful to poetics researchers looking for the definition and properties of literariness in language. To all other linguists and literature students and researchers it is an open window to each other's field and to motivated sign theory.