The bridge of iconicity

Linguistics researcher and lecturer Dr Pamela Perniss is to give a keynote speech at the Tenth International Symposium on Iconicity in Language and Literature at the University of Tübingen, Germany this month.

Entitled: 'The Bridge of Iconicity: From a World of Experience to the Experience of Language' her speech will explore the concept of iconicity, a resemblance between properties of form and meaning, which has traditionally been considered to be a marginal, irrelevant phenomenon for our understanding of language. The arbitrary and symbolic nature of language has long been taken as a design feature of the human linguistic system. In this talk, Dr Perniss proposes an alternative framework in which iconicity in face-to-face communication (both spoken and signed) is a powerful vehicle for bridging between language and human experience, and, as such, iconicity provides a key to understanding language evolution, learning, and processing. In language evolution, iconicity might have played a key role in establishing displacement, the core ability of language to refer beyond the here-and-now. In language learning, iconicity may play a critical role in supporting referential mapping, learning to map linguistic labels to objects and events in the world. By linking linguistic form to sensori-motor systems, iconicity may provide a mechanism accounting for the embodiment of language processing.

Dr Perniss said: "I've known about the conference and the publications of one of its main organisers (Prof Olga Fischer, University of Amsterdam) but have never attended before. As someone who has been working on iconicity (as resemblance between form and meaning) in signed languages for many years, as well as having published more recently on the importance of iconicity within a theoretical framework of language, I am thrilled to be invited to the conference as a keynote speaker.