New Book: Iconicity (Fischer & Nänny)

[Paul Peranteau]

John Benjamins Publishing announces a new work of interest to Functional
Linguists:

The Motivated Sign.
Iconicity in language and literature 2.
Olga FISCHER ((University of Amsterdam) and Max NÄNNY (University of
Zürich) (eds.)
US & Canada: 1 58811 003 6 / USD 100.00 (Hardcover)
Rest of world: 90 272 2574 5 / NLG 220.00 (Hardcover)

This volume, a sequel to Form Miming Meaning (1999), offers a
selection of papers given at the second international symposium on
iconicity (Amsterdam 1999). In the light of semiotic, linguistic
and literary theory the studies gathered here investigate how
iconicity works on all levels of language, in literary texts and
other forms of verbal discourse. They investigate, among other
subjects, the semiotic foundations of iconicity, the role played by
iconicity in language evolution and in the way words are positioned
syntactically.
Special consideration is given to the iconic nature
of metaphor and the 'mise en abyme', to iconically motivated
punctuation and other typographic matters such as the manipulation
of colour, fonts and spacing in advertising and in poetry. Other
studies show how iconicity influences Shakespeare's rhetoric, the
structural design of Margaret Atwood's writings and the changing
fashions in fictional landscape description. Thus, these analyses
of 'the motivated sign' represent yet another strong challenge to
"Saussure's dogma of arbitrariness" (Jakobson).

Contributions by: Earl R. Anderson; C. Jac Conradie; Olga Fischer;
Robbie B.H. Goh; Anne C. Henry; William J. Herlofsky; Loretta
Innocenti; Frank Jansen; Jean-Jacques Lecercle; Leo Lentz;
Christina Ljungberg; Wolfgang G. Müller; Max Nänny; Ralf Norrman;
Winfried Nöth; Piotr Sadowski; John J. White; Werner Wolf.





                                 John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Offices:                Philadelphia
Amsterdam:
Websites:               http://www.benjamins.com
http://www.benjamins.nl
E-mail:         service at benjamins.com
customer.services at benjamins.nl
Phone:          +215 836-1200                           +31 20 6304747
Fax:                    +215 836-1204                           +31 20 6739773