Iconic update
Iconic update

Author(s): Katja Jasinskaja
Subject(s): Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: syntactics; combination of signs; non-linguistic signs; national body language; semiotics of culture; cultural studies; nonverbal semiotics; contemporary phraseology
Summary/Abstract: This paper presents an idea of how the notion of iconicity, in particular, temporal iconicity in narrative discourse, can be made explicit in a formal semantic framework, such as the DRT. It argues for a distinction between two discourse update modes: (a) non-iconic update, which characterises the standard way utterances are interpreted; and (b) iconic update, which mimes the process of direct perception. Iconic update plays a central role in the account of reportive and historical present, as well as the temporal progression in past tense narrative. The proposed approach reconstructs the basic predictions of previous accounts of these phenomena, and allows for extensions to new empirical domains that go beyond temporality.

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