Different Perspectives on Arbitrariness and Iconicity of Linguistic Signs

There has been a question about linguistic signs are arbitrary or iconic in linguistics.Saussure' s arbitrariness focuses on analyz ing the relations between signified and signifier in terms of language itself,while Pierce' s iconicity reflects the relations between linguistic sign and the outside reality from the perspective of the whole language system.It elaborates what arbitrariness and iconicity refer to so as to compare and explore the two subjects.In addition,with some examples,it illustrates that both of them are coexist as well as complementary.