Following Peirce, the relation between the signs of spatial descriptions
and their object of reference is symbolic, indexical, or iconic. According
to this semiotic typology, symbols are conventional, arbitrary, and general
signs. Lexemes such as room, hall, attic, or corner are symbols in this
sense. There seems to be no natural relation between these words and their
object of reference.
An index is a sign which stands in a relation of contiguity or causality
to a particular object in a specific situation. In language, such indexical
signs occur in the interactional situations in which utterances are used.
They include indicators of the identity of speech participants, their location
and orientation in space, and the time of the utterance. Deictic spatial
and temporal expressions in language and many nonverbal expressions are
examples of indexical signs.
The iconic sign is related to its referent
by similarity or analogy. Following the hypotheses of Enquist (1986) and
Ehrich (1989), texts are structured by principles of discourse
organization and not by rules. What is the nature of these principles?According
to Ehrich, the principles of textual organisation are more communicative,
aesthetic, and psychological than grammatical. The most basic principleof
discourse organization is a principle of iconicity. Among other things
it privileges a natural ordering which the ancients have called ordo
naturalis. The principle, however, cannot be followed in texts which
describe simultaneity of events and in particular the simultaneous perception
of spatial configurations. In the light of Charles Sanders Peirce's theory
of iconicity, the verbal patterns of spatial descriptions evince imaginal,
diagrammatic, and metaphoric
iconicity. These categories of iconicity represent their object with
an increasing degree of abstraction.
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