1. Types of signs Indexical Iconic Symbolic
A mode defined by relationship of necessity (especially cause and effect). Prototypically, think fever.
Iconic
A mode defined by relationship of resemblance. Prototypically, think picture.
Symbolic
A mode defined by relationship of arbitrariness, convention, and learning. Prototypically, think word.
English 306A; Harris

2. Bow-wow-pooh-pooh-yo-he-ho theories
Index-to-icon-to-symbol migration theories
English 306A; Harris

3. Dimensions of signs Indexicality Iconicity Symbolicity
An onomasiological tendency defined by relationship of necessity (esp. cause and effect).
Iconicity
An onomasiological tendency defined by relationship of resemblance.
Symbolicity
An onomasiological tendency defined by relationship of arbitrariness, convention, and learning.
English 306A; Harris

4. Metaphor and metonymy Indirect representation Metaphor is iconic
Something (called the vehicle) carries the primary signification for something else (tenor) that ordinarily holds that signification.
Metaphor is iconic
The vehicle/tenor relationship is an asserted resemblance: the tenor is said to be like the vehicle in some way.
Metonymy is indexical
The vehicle/tenor relationship is (not exactly necessary but) drawn from the same habitat: the tenor is related to the vehicle in some way.
English 306A; Harris

5. Metonymy— The principle of set membership
One element of a set or a relationship (the vehicle) singled out to represent other element(s) (the tenor)
Hollywood loves westerns.
Toronto collapses!
Calgary wins in OT!
All hands on deck.
Thirty head of cattle.
English 306A; Harris

6. Metaphor— The principle of comparison
One element (the vehicle) represents another element (the tenor), to which it is unrelated.
My love is red, red rose.
Homer is a pig.
Toronto is toast.
The table leg is broken.
The orthopedic wing is closed.
Fire kills thousands every year. (Personification)
English 306A; Harris

7. Metonym
Attributes are picked out (taken as indexical) to represent something associated with those attributes. Like a mascot.
Dancin’ Homer
English 306A; Harris

8. Metaphor Attributes are invoked, by way of resemblance (iconic).
Homer is a pig.
Eats a lot
Noisy
Not very clean.
English 306A; Harris

9. English 306A; Harris

10. “Pussy”
English 306A; Harris

11. “Pussy”
English 306A; Harris

12. “Pussy”
English 306A; Harris

13. “Pussy”
English 306A; Harris

14. “Pussy” Metaphor Tenor = vagina Vehicle = cat Attributes Warm Furry
English 306A; Harris

15. “Pussy”
Metonymy
Tenor = woman
Vehicle = vagina/pussy
The ultimate devaluing of a (category of a) person: to a small anatomical component.
English 306A; Harris

16. “Pussy” = Metaphor Tenor = the insult target
Vehicle = woman (not vagina)
Attributes
Weak
Soft
Quitter
Means ‘Opposite of a man’, but in a wholly evaluative way. =
English 306A; Harris

17. “Pussy” Metaphor  Metonymy  Metaphor
Indexicality, Iconicity
a relatively mundane example of ordinary language
not a fancy literary or rhetorical device
these processes, and figuration generally, are pervasive
English 306A; Harris

18. “Pussy”
English 306A; Harris

19. “Pussy” = Metaphor Tenor = the insult target
Vehicle = a particular type of woman (still not vagina)
Attributes
Weak
Soft
Quitter
Means ‘the sort of woman that gives all of us a bad name for being weak, soft, quitters’ (?); in a wholly evaluative way. =
English 306A; Harris

20. We now return you to regular programmingF
English 306A; Harris

21. Indexicality Deixis Egocentricity Anthropocentrism
Pointing words
Egocentricity
Speaker-oriented
Anthropocentrism
Human-oriented
Inherent orientation
Human-body orientation projected to objects
English 306A; Harris

22. Indexicality Deictics
Gk. deiktos ≈ “to show”
Pointing words
Pronouns
Picks out attributes (speaker, hearer, masculine, feminine, …)
Proximals
Speaking location
Speaking time
Relative location to speaker
English 306A; Harris

23. Indexical orientation — Deictic centre Egocentricity
The speaker (or, in a rhetorical extention, the hearer) as the (default) reference point for everything else.
“The squirrel is behind the tree.”
“Mount Pinotubo is on the left” (compare “your left”)
English 306A; Harris

24. Indexical orientation — Deictic centre Egocentricity
Pronouns
First person (I, me, we, us,…)
Second person (you, your)
Third person (he, she, it, they, …)
Proximals
Speaking location (here and there)
Speaking time (now and then)
Relative location to speaker (this and that)
English 306A; Harris

25. Indexicality— Inherent orientation Anthropocentricity
Gk. anthropos ≈ “man”
(hu)man-centred
Human-first (agent-centred) syntax
I feel bad
*Bad is felt by me.
She knows math.
*Math is known by her.
English 306A; Harris

26. Indexicality Anthropocentricity
Gk. anthropos ≈ “man”
(hu)man-centred
Other objects oriented like humans
front, back
left, right
before, behind
English 306A; Harris

27. Deictic (egocentric) vs. Inherent (anthropocentric) Orientation
English 306A; Harris

28. Indexicality Anthropocentricity
Gk. anthropos ≈ “man”
(hu)man-centred
Personification
Metaphor sub-type (i.e., iconic)
X is a person
My car just doesn’t want to go.
Unemployment has moved into Canada.
Tuition ate up my wages.
English 306A; Harris

29. Indexicality Anthropocentricity
Gk. anthropos ≈ “man”
(hu)man-centred
Personification
Metaphor sub-type (i.e., iconic)
X is a person
My car just doesn’t want to go.
Unemployment has moved into Canada.
Tuition ate up my wages.
‘Sentientification’ ‘organismification’
English 306A; Harris

30. Indexicality Anthropocentricity
Gk. anthropos ≈ “man”
(hu)man-centred
Daniel Dennett’s
“Intentional stance”
Dennet’s "intentional stance” (assuming rational agency):
It works with people almost all the time. … Our use of the intentional strategy is so habitual and effortless that the role it plays in shaping our expectations about people is easily overlooked. The strategy also works on most other mammals most of the time. For instance, you can use it to design better traps to catch those mammals, by reasoning about what the creature knows or believes about various things, what it prefers, what it wants to avoid. The strategy works on birds, and on fish, and on reptiles, and on insects and spiders, and even on such lowly and unenterprising creatures as clams (once a clam believes there is danger about, it will not relax its grip on its closed shell until it is convinced that the danger has passed). It also works on some artifacts: the chess-playing computer will not take your knight because it knows that there is a line of ensuing play that would lead to losing its rook, and it does not want that to happen. More modestly, the thermostat will turn off the boiler as soon as it comes to believe the room has reached the desired temperature.
The strategy even works for plants. In a locale with late spring storms, you should plant apple varieties that are particularly cautious about concluding that it is spring--which is when they want to blossom, of course. It even works for such inanimate and apparently undesigned phenomena as lightning. An electrician once explained to me how he worked out how to protect my underground water pump from lightning damage: lightning, he said, always wants to find the best way to ground, but sometimes it gets tricked into taking the second-best paths. You can protect the pump by making another, better path more obvious to the lightning. (1997, 65; Dennett's italics)
English 306A; Harris

31. “It works with people almost all the time
“It works with people almost all the time. … Our use of the intentional strategy is so habitual and effortless that the role it plays in shaping our expectations about people is easily overlooked. The strategy also works on most other mammals most of the time. For instance, you can use it to design better traps to catch those mammals, by reasoning about what the creature knows or believes about various things, what it prefers, what it wants to avoid. The strategy works on birds, and on fish, and on reptiles, and on insects and spiders, and even on such lowly and unenterprising creatures as clams (once a clam believes there is danger about, it will not relax its grip on its closed shell until it is convinced that the danger has passed). It also works on some artifacts: the chess-playing computer will not take your knight because it knows that there is a line of ensuing play that would lead to losing its rook, and it does not want that to happen. More modestly, the thermostat will turn off the boiler as soon as it comes to believe the room has reached the desired temperature.
The strategy even works for plants. In a locale with late spring storms, you should plant apple varieties that are particularly cautious about concluding that it is spring--which is when they want to blossom, of course. It even works for such inanimate and apparently undesigned phenomena as lightning. An electrician once explained to me how he worked out how to protect my underground water pump from lightning damage: lightning, he said, always wants to find the best way to ground, but sometimes it gets tricked into taking the second-best paths. You can protect the pump by making another, better path more obvious to the lightning.” (Dennett, 1997, 65)
English 306A; Harris

32. Iconicity Sequential order Distance Quantity “Don’t drink and drive”
Immediacy of action
Quantity
Reduplication
English 306A; Harris

33. Iconicity Principle of sequential order
Unless marked, the order of words (by default) mirrors the order of events.
He kicked sand in my face and I got mad.
I got mad and he kicked sand in my face.
English 306A; Harris

34. Iconicity Principle of distance
Linguistic distance (proximity) tends to mirror conceptual distance.
She squeezed me.
She gave me a squeeze.
She gave a squeeze to me.
English 306A; Harris

35. Iconicity Principle of quantity
Length of utterance correlates with (speaker’s perception of) quantity of concept.
Dinosaurs lived a l o o o n g time ago.
Dinosaurs lived a long, long, long, … time ago.
Lawyerese.
Political speeches.
English 306A; Harris

36. Iconicity — Principle of quantity Reduplication
Japanese
hito 'person'
hitobito ’group of people'
kami 'god'
kamigami ’group of gods'
Mandarin
xiao 'small'
xiaoxiao 'very small'
gaoxing 'happy'
gaogaoxingxing 'very happy'
English 306A; Harris

37. Iconicity — Principle of quantity Reduplication
/ora¯/ = man
/ ora¯ ora¯/ = all sorts of men
/anak/ = child
/anak anak/ = all sorts of children
/ma¯a/ = mango
/ ma¯a ma¯a / = all sorts of mangoes
English 306A; Harris

38. Iconicity — Principle of quantity Reduplication
Download the SIL IPA fonts to see these transcriptions in PPS files
/ora¯/ = man
/ ora¯ ora¯/ = all sorts of men
/anak/ = child
/anak anak/ = all sorts of children
/ma¯a/ = mango
/ ma¯a ma¯a / = all sorts of mangoes
English 306A; Harris

39. Iconicity — Principle of quantity Conceptual Reduplication
Trinidad and Tobago
[jEswij]
emphatic confirmation, agreement; interjective intensifier
Children at Play, Romeo Downer
English 306A; Harris

40. Iconicity — Principle of quantity Conceptual Reduplication
Trinidad and Tobago
[jEswij]
emphatic confirmation, agreement; interjective intensifier
yes-we?
Children at Play, Romeo Downer
English 306A; Harris

41. Iconicity — Principle of quantity Conceptual Reduplication
Trinidad and Tobago
[jEswij]
emphatic confirmation, agreement; interjective intensifier
yes-we?
yes-whee?
Children at Play, Romeo Downer
English 306A; Harris

42. Iconicity — Principle of quantity Conceptual Reduplication
Trinidad and Tobago
[jEswij]
emphatic confirmation, agreement; interjective intensifier
yes-we?
yes-whee?
yes-oui!
Children at Play, Romeo Downer
English 306A; Harris

43. Iconicity — Quantity or distance? Politeness/Face preservation
No smoking.
Please, don’t smoke.
Would you mind not smoking?
I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t smoke.
Customers are requested to refrain from smoking if they can.
It would be appreciated deeply by all of us here at Rapperswill Clothiers if you observe our no-smoking policy.
English 306A; Harris

44. Any questions? Indexicality Iconicity (Symbolicity
Necessary linkage; metonymical; linguistic pointing.
Iconicity
Representational linkage; metaphorical; linguistic and conceptual linkages.
(Symbolicity
“Arbitrary”, conventional linkages; motivations atrophied.)
English 306A; Harris