Diagrammatic and Imagic Hypoicons in Signed and Verbal Languages
Résumé
Far from being a marginal phenomenon in natural languages, iconicity is widely attested in verbal languages and is a structural feature of signed languages. There is a difference, though, in the nature of iconicity in each code. Whereas almost all instances of iconicity detectable in verbal languages belong to the Peircean category of diagrammatic hypoicons, the iconicity which characterizes signed languages both at the lexical and at the discourse level may be ascribed to the category of images. The wealth of hypoicons of images in signed languages can be explained by taking into account not only the peculiar semiogenesis of these languages, but also the "substance of their expression". Compared to the phono-acoustic modality, the visual-gestural modality filters iconicity in a less fine-grained way. In spite of this difference, signed languages are as profoundly arbitrary as verbal languages. Iconicity is in fact governed and ruled by system constraints. The iconic phenomena detected in signed languages do not contradict, therefore, the Saussurean principle of Radical Arbitrariness, largely considered as a design feature of natural language.