Walter A. Koch
THE ICONIC ROOTS
OF LANGUAGE
Essays
on the Non-Arbitrary Origins
of
Human Communication
(Including
50 Coloured Figures)
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Associates of the Chair of English
Philology and General Semiotics, Ruhr-University Bochum (during excursion to the
Neandertal near Düsseldorf, December 1996). From left to right: Anja Gebert,
Claudia Bald, Ingrid Braun, Sandra Kölking, Walter Koch, Claudia Steinbach,
Anke Möller, Andrea Schulz.
Walter A. Koch was Professor of English Philology and General Semiotics at Ruhr-University Bochum from 1968 through 1999. Since 1999 he has been Professor Emeritus. In 1984, he founded the Bochum Semiotic Colloquy (“BSC”) which became engaged in interdisciplinary symposia and research. He has been editor of BBS (Bochumer Beiträge zur Semiotik) and BPX (Bochum Publications in Evolutionary Cultural Semiotics). His main interests are Semiotics, Cultural Semiotics, Theory of Literature and Poetry, Systems Theory, a General Theory of Evolution, Systems Philosophy. Among his publications: Varia Semiotica (Hildesheim: Olms, 1971), Poetry and Science (Tübingen: Narr, 1983), Evolutionary Cultural Semiotics (Bochum: Universitätsverlag, 1986), The Biology of Literature (Bochum: Universitätsverlag, 1993), The Roots of Literature (Bochum: Universitätsverlag, 1993), ed. with Gabriel Altmann: Systems: New Paradigms for the Human Sciences (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997).
The
present book is a collection of three essays which – though
conceived of for different contexts -
combine in the effort of suggesting an overall and crucial importance of ICONICITY for explaining the evolution not only for LANGUAGE in
especial, but also of INFORMATION in general. This radical thesis is in conflict
with mainstream theories of linguistics. ICONICITY is considered to be a
foundation-stone in any attempt at a holistic representation of our
communication systems and also of the universe at large. This means that our
seemingly arbitrary language ultimately relies on various types of iconic imagination.
Among the billions of different words that have been ‘invented’ on this
planet, there are only very few, if any, that have been completely arbitrary
from the very start.
ISBN 978-3-8334-7272-5
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