Tabakowska Elżbieta, Ljungberg Christina, Fischer Olga (Editors). Insistent Images

John Benjamins, 2007. — xiv, 360 p. — (Iconicity in Language and Literature). — ISBN: 978-90-272-4341-6.Insistent Images presents a number of new departures dealing with iconicity on the conceptual and the structural levels. On the level of structure, the interface between different aspects of iconicity, lexical meaning and grammar is discussed in reference to both spoken and signed languages. Novel approaches to aural iconicity investigate a wide range of phenomena from phonological iconicity to the role of iconic features in discourse, in the nineteenth century practice of reading aloud, in the almost magic incantations of fin de siècle poetry and in Tolkien’s invented languages. Several papers examine the function of iconicity in visual and avant-garde poetry, where iconic features allow a reduction of means, which, paradoxically, generates textual diversification and complexity. A discussion of iconic text strategies shows how texts are comprehended through iconic holistic transfer from complex natural and action patterns. ‘Liberature’, which integrates text, image and physical space, is another novel area of study, as are the investigations into the iconic properties of film and of multimedia performance. Film is intrinsically iconic, while at the same time being, like photography, indexical; in multimedia performance, on the other hand, iconicity functions intermedially by both integrating and reflecting processes of perception and conceptualization. These last two new fields of inquiry further enhance this truly interdisciplinary volume’s explorations of icons as ‘insistent images’Iconicity and grammaticalization
Putting grammaticalization to the iconicity test
Iconic thumbs, pinkies and pointers
Iconicity and the aural
The physical basis for phonological iconicity
Reading aloud and Charles Dickens’ aural iconic prose style
Iconicity and the divine in the fin de sièclepoetry of W.B. Yeats
Is lámatyávea linguistic heresy? Iconicity in J.R.R. Tolkien’s invented languages
Iconicity and the visual
The beauty of life and the variety of signs: Guillaume Apollinaire’s ‘lyrical ideogram’ La Cravate et la montre
Forms of restricted iconicity in modern avant-garde poetry
Eco-iconicity in the poetry and poem-groups of E. E. Cummings
The language of film is a matrix of icons
Liberature: A new literary genre?
Iconicity and conceptualization
Meaning on the one and on the other hand: Iconicity in native vs. foreign signed languages
Iconic text strategies: Path, sorting & weighting, kaleidoscope
‘Damn mad’: Palindromic figurations in literary narratives
Iconicity and structure
Iconicity and the grammar–lexis interface
Iconicity in the coding of pragmatic functions: The case of disclaimers in argumentative discourse
Double negation and iconicity
Iconicity and multimedia / intertextuality
Iconicity in multimedia performance: Laurie Anderson’s White Lily