The Iconic Quality in Verbal Patterning
Ming-yu Tseng
Department of English
National Dong Hwa University

Abstract
This paper explores how iconicity and verbal patterning might relate to each other.  As far as iconicity in literature is concerned, attention is often paid to auditory iconicity (e.g. phonaesthesia) and to visual iconicity (e.g. concrete poetry).  The paper will argue that lexico-grammatical structure also plays a role.  To put the theoretical argument into practice, this paper will analyze some selected texts from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets.  By scrutinizing various linguistic or stylistic features in the chosen texts, the discussion will demonstrate how the iconic quality is exemplified in verbal patterning.  It is hoped that the analysis contributes not only to a deeper appreciation of the meanings of the analyzed texts but also to a better understanding of Eliot’s poetics.  Moreover, this paper revitalizes the issue that iconicity in language use is more pervasive than has been assumed, an issue that is yet to be further tackled.
Keywords: Four Quartets, lexico-grammatical iconicity; parallelism, T. S. Eliot, verbal pattern, word-view and representation