| Acknowledgements | 第1-6页 |
| Abstract | 第6-8页 |
| 摘要 | 第8-11页 |
| Chapter 1 Introduction | 第11-17页 |
| ·The Definition of Iconicity | 第11-12页 |
| ·Arbitrariness or Iconicity: A Linguistic Controversy | 第12-16页 |
| ·The Early Period (Ancient Greece- the End of 19th Century) | 第13-14页 |
| ·Arbitrariness-dominant Period (1910s-1960s) | 第14-15页 |
| ·Iconicity-dominant Period (1960s-) | 第15-16页 |
| ·The Purpose of the Present Research | 第16页 |
| ·The Framework of the Present Thesis | 第16-17页 |
| Chapter 2 Literature Review | 第17-25页 |
| ·Semiotic Approach to Iconicity | 第17-20页 |
| ·Saussure’s Theory | 第17-18页 |
| ·Humboldt’s Theory | 第18-19页 |
| ·Peirce’s Theory | 第19-20页 |
| ·Cognitive Approach to Iconicity | 第20-25页 |
| ·Phonetic Iconicity | 第20-21页 |
| ·Morphological Iconicity | 第21-22页 |
| ·Semantic Iconicity | 第22页 |
| ·Syntactic Iconicity | 第22-25页 |
| Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework of the Present Research | 第25-33页 |
| ·Politeness Principle | 第25-26页 |
| ·Theories of Conversational Implicature | 第26-29页 |
| ·Grice’s Co-operative Principle | 第26-27页 |
| ·Horn’s Q- and R-principles | 第27-28页 |
| ·Levinson’s Q-, I- & M-principles | 第28-29页 |
| ·Speech Acts Theory | 第29-31页 |
| ·Austin’s Trichotomy of Speech Acts | 第29-30页 |
| ·Searle’s Distinction between Primary Illocutionary Act and Secondary Illocutionary Act | 第30-31页 |
| ·Relevance Theory | 第31-33页 |
| Chapter 4 Pragmatic Analysis of Iconicity | 第33-63页 |
| ·Quantity Iconicity | 第33-43页 |
| ·Linguistic Quantity and the Degree of Politeness | 第33-37页 |
| ·Linguistic Quantity and the Richness of Conversational Implicature | 第37-42页 |
| ·Linguistic Quantity and Social Distance | 第42-43页 |
| ·Sequencing Iconicity | 第43-51页 |
| ·Temporal Sequence | 第43-46页 |
| ·Spatial Sequence | 第46-49页 |
| ·The Sequence from Up to Down | 第47页 |
| ·The Sequence from Big to Small | 第47-48页 |
| ·The Sequence from Near to Far | 第48-49页 |
| ·Cognitive Sequence | 第49-50页 |
| ·Cause-Effect Sequence | 第50-51页 |
| ·Markedness Iconicity | 第51-56页 |
| ·Markedness and Extra Conversational Implicature | 第51-53页 |
| ·Markedness and Fluctuations of Processing Effort, Contextual Effect and Degree of Relevance | 第53-55页 |
| ·Markedness and Indirectness of Speech Acts | 第55-56页 |
| ·Distance Iconicity | 第56-63页 |
| ·Choice of Distal or Proximal Deixis and Social-Psychological Distance | 第56-60页 |
| ·Code Distance and Conceptual Distance | 第60-63页 |
| Chapter 5 Conclusion | 第63-65页 |
| Bibliography | 第65-69页 |
| Publications | 第69页 |
