A View of Iconicity from Saussure's Perspective of Arbitrariness

This paper clarifies the relationship between arbitrariness and iconicity from the perspective of Saussure's general linguistics so as to eliminate some scholars' misunderstanding of Saussure's idea about language.First,it traces the origin of the study about iconicity,reviews the research about it and elucidates its definition.Second,it introduces the study about the relationship between metaphor and iconicity,summarizes the general views of metaphor and iconicity and highlights its contributions and initiation.Finally,it refutes Hiraga's view about language and points out that there's a continuum between absolute and relative arbitrariness,that they are not binary,and that iconicity has already been included within relative arbitrariness and it does not contradict arbitrariness according to Saussure's view of language.