Iconic and Symbolic Language

Introduction

Not only does one communicate in language, but one thinks in language also, as readily attested to by many of those living alone, who, when observed to be talking to themselves, will respond that, so far from going mad, they are merely “thinking out loud.” Indeed one has only to listen to young children, alone in their beds at night, running through the events of their day, or perhaps in communication with siblings, articulating, often humorously, the relations between, for example, arms and legs, hands and feet, fingers and toes, and wrists and ankles, not to mention necks, and in such a manner familiarizing themselves with, and often consciously and humorously disrupting, established conceptual categories, to recognize that in addition to being a means of communication or system of signifiers, language is also a system of the concepts signified thereby. The linguistic signifiers and the concepts signified by them being as Ferdinand de Saussure (1959) and, following him,...