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1 Introduction Notes 1 Introduction 1. In this book, the term ‘icon’ is used in a narrower semiotic sense as defined below than is usually employed in computer jargon in which it may refer to any visual symbols. 2. The computer examples mainly concern Macintosh screen display. 3. Incidentally, the wastebasket on the Macintosh screen is used not only for discarding the documents or applications, but is also used for ejecting floppy disks or compact disks from the drive. The latter function contradicts our conceptualisation of a wastebasket to the extent that computer users often find it difficult or unnatural to follow this ejecting procedure for the disk. 4. Metaphorical expressions are illustrated in italics, and metaphorical concepts in uppercase letters. 5. This does not imply that there is not also the reverse process of conceptu- alisation, i.e. understanding computers in terms of the human mind – COM- PUTER IS A MIND. We say, for example, ‘this computer has a large memory’, ‘His computer has a mind of its own’ and ‘My computer is stubborn.’ 6. Wescott (1971: 418) observes that among the three major forms of language – speech, writing and sign language – iconic elements are most readily recog- nisable in the third. Landsberg (1980: 98) also maintains that ‘sign language and writing, at least in its evolutionary perspective, exhibit very extensive and clear iconic elements’. See also Deuchar (1990) and Taub (2001). 7. A mora is a unit of timing. Each mora takes approximately the same amount of time to pronounce. For further explanation, see Chapter 5. 8. For further explanations given in English about Japanese haiku, see Blyth (1952), Yasuda (1957), Henderson (1958) and Shirane (1998). 9. Word-for-word translation is given by the author and not in Matsuo (1996 [1694]). My word-for-word translation is based on Matsuo (1966 [1694]) and Matsuo (1996 [1694]). The in-text reference with different years of publica- tion indicates that the year in square brackets is a source or an original work and the year in parentheses is an access volume according to which the cita- tion is made. 10. Some rivers have human male names such as Bando-Taro (‘place-male name’) for Tone River. Furthermore, rivers are prototypically metaphorised as snakes in Japanese idioms, e.g. kawa ga dakoo-suru (‘A river snakes’), kawa ga hebi no yoo-ni magaru (‘A river curves like a snake’), etc. 11. For the frequency of vowels used in Oku no Hosomichi, see Table 5.7. 12. This is not to deny, of course, the importance of the Hallidayan tradition of viewing language as a social semiotic (Halliday 1978, 1994a, Hodge and Kress 1988, among others). In this tradition, signs are never arbitrary, and ‘motivation’ should be formulated in rela- tion to the sign-maker and the context in which the sign is produced, 228 Notes 229 and not in isolation from the act of producing analogies and classifica- tions. All linguistic form is used in a mediated, non-arbitrary manner in the expression of meaning. (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996: 7) 13. For further discussion on Peircean definitions, see Chapter 2. 14. There are a few exceptions. Henle (1958: 177) seems to be the first that bor- rowed the notion of iconicity from Peirce and claimed that ‘there is clearly an iconic element in metaphor’. Ricoeur (1979 [1978]: 147) takes up Henle’s insight and suggests that a semantic innovation by metaphor ‘is not only schematized but pictured’, implying Peircean ‘diagram’ and ‘image’. Danesi (1995) deals with the image content of metaphor as iconicity, and reports a psycholinguistic experimental study. Taub (2001) is a detailed survey of icon–metaphor links in American Sign Language. Janney (1999: 953) regards the issue of metaphor and iconicity as a new direction of research in prag- matics by claiming the need to ‘start paying more attention to questions related to how pragmatic stylistic and rhetorical choices function as figura- tive gestures in speech and writing’. 15. For a more detailed definition of ‘cognitive linguistics’, see Ungerer and Schmid (1996), Lee (2001) and Croft and Cruse (2004). 16. ‘Blending’ actually covers a wider range of linguistic and non-linguistic phenomena than metaphor. For further discussion, see Chapter 2 as well as Turner and Fauconnier (1995a, b), Turner (1996), Fauconnier and Turner (1998, 2002), among others. 17. Blasko and Merski (1999: 124) also state that ‘haiku is a particularly good candidate’ for studying the cognitive processes involved in creative writing because of its extreme brevity combined with great depth of meaning, the use of vivid imagery for both composition and appreciation, and its wide accessibility. 18. For discussion about poetic and literal (everyday) language, see Wellek and Warren (1963 [1949]: 22–8), Leech (1969: 5–6) and Toolan (1996: 24–97). For the claim about the poetic nature of everyday language, see Friedrich (1986), Gibbs (1994), Isami (1994) and Janney (1999). 2 Methodological Framework 1. Even in the days of structural linguistics, there were a few linguists who were well aware of the issue of linguistic iconicity. See Hockett (1958), for example. 2. Jakobson (1971 [1965]) also deals with another non-arbitrary property, i.e. indexicality of artifice, or the factual or causal contiguity between form and meaning. However, he devotes most of his discussion to the issue of iconicity. 3. The term ‘cognitive poetics’ was first used by Reuven Tsur (1983), whose def- inition, however, ‘specifically excludes the cognitive linguistic research in conceptual integration, blending, and metaphor’ (Freeman 2000: 253). Although Tsur’s work (1992a, b, 1996) on the relationship of prosody and cognitive processes marks an important contribution, I use the term ‘cognitive poetics’ in a broader sense as addressed by Freeman (2000) to 230 Notes incorporate the cognitive theory of metaphor and blending in the analysis of the structure and content of literary texts. Cognitive poetics is a growing field of literary study which embraces various approaches and analyses from the perspective of the workings of the human mind. See Semino and Culpeper (2002), Stockwell (2002), Gavins and Steen (2003), among others. 4. Volume numbers and paragraph numbers in Peirce (1931–58) are indicated in the square brackets. 5. Deacon (1997) elaborates this point in his neurological explanation of the evolution of communication systems. 6. Table 2.2 is reproduced with a slight alteration from Hiraga (1994: 7). 7. Figure 2.1 is based on the graphic representation of blending provided in the website for blending (cf. http://markturner.org/blending.html). For a more detailed explanation, see Fauconnier and Turner (1998: 269–72, 2002: 45–50). 8. Turner and Fauconnier use the term ‘mental space’ in contrast to the term ‘conceptual domain’, employed by Lakoff, Johnson and other cognitivists. Mental spaces are small conceptual arrays put together for local purposes of action and understanding, while conceptual domain is a vast structural array that could not be made active in thinking (cf. Turner 1996). 9. The CONDUIT metaphor is also prevalent in Japanese. However, there are at least a few other competing metaphors for language in Japanese. They are FLUID, TOOL and FOOD. See Nomura (1996) on FLUID metaphor, and Hiraga (1995b) on TOOL and FOOD metaphors. 10. The terminology that I suggest here represents the nature of the two types of diagrammaticality more clearly than Haiman. He defines ‘motivation’ as ‘ways in which the linguistic form is a diagram of conceptual structure, and homologous with it’ (1985b: 2) and ‘isomorphism’ as ‘the tendency to asso- ciate a single invariant meaning with each single invariant form’ (Haiman 1985b: 4). The present classification also secures the term ‘motivation’ for a more general use in which it signifies the ‘non-arbitrary’ relationship between form and meaning. Ohori (1987) offers a critique of Haiman’s classification of iconicity. 11. Also see Jakobson (1971 [1965]), Bolinger (1977), Haiman (1985a, b), Waugh (1992, 1994), Hiraga (1994), among others. 12. Figure 2.6 is reproduced with a slight alteration from Hiraga (2003: 322). 3 Manifestation of Metaphor–Icon Links: Prototypical Examples 1. A number of critical studies have been devoted to philological and rhetori- cal aspects of this poem. According to Westerweel (1984: 56), the most important works include Tuve (1952), Summers (1954), Boultenhouse (1959), Walker (1962), Bennett (1963), Hastings (1963), Brown and Ingoldsby (1972) and Higgins (1977). Of course, all of these studies have taken up the close link between form and meaning of the poem; but none has a mention of this link as a case of iconicity. From the perspective of cog- nitive poetics, Stockwell (2002: 67–70) analyses the poem in detail using the Notes 231 concept of ‘action chains’, but does not go very far in relating their formal patterns and meanings with iconicity of the poem. 2. There are other repetitions in the poem. For example, ‘became most’, ‘let me’, ‘this day thy victories’ and ‘the flight in me’ are repeated in each stanza. These repetitions reinforce the content expressed. 3. Surprisingly, the poem appears in horizontal form in many modern editions (see Herbert 1994 [1633]: 35, for example). 4. There is a different version of the poem in The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1943). The basic claim made in this book also applies to this version. 5. The choice of this particular poetic text is my own; but the choice of the English Romantic period was suggested by Donald Freeman (1978a). He says, the poets of the English Romantic period were concerned perhaps more than those of any other epoch with the role of poetic language in a theory of poetry. The Romantic era thus is a highly appropriate locus for an inquiry into the relationship between poetic syntax and poetic structure.
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