Iconicity

Iconicity is a relationship of resemblance or similarity between the two aspects of a sign: its form and its meaning. An iconic sign is one whose form resembles its meaning in some way. The opposite of iconicity is arbitrariness. In an arbitrary sign, the association between form and meaning is based solely on convention; there is nothing in the form of the sign that resembles aspects of its meaning. A road sign that marks a bicycle lane and has an image of bicycle on it is iconic because the form of the sign, in particular the graphic image on it, is related in a direct way to its meaning; both form and meaning have to do with bicycles. A warning road sign that has the form of a white triangle with red margins is arbitrary, because its formational units are not motivated by any aspect of its meaning. Because iconicity has to do with the properties of signs in general and not only those of linguistic signs, it plays an important role in the field of semiotics—the study of signs and signaling. However, language is the most pervasive symbolic communicative system used by humans, and the notion of iconicity plays an important role in characterizing the linguistic sign and linguistic systems. Iconicity is also central to the study of literary uses of language, such as prose and poetry. The main question concerning the role of iconicity in language is whether a given linguistic sign is iconic or arbitrary. This question was raised several millennia ago regarding the nature of the relationship between the form and the meaning of words. Later on, the scope of the question was expanded to include other types of linguistic entities, such as morphological and syntactic structures. The linguistic study of sign languages, which began in the early 1960s, has made a special contribution to the study of the role of iconicity in language, since sign languages are capable of much greater iconic expressions than are spoken languages.