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PSYCHOSEMANTIC INVESTIGATION OF VISUAL PERCEPTION OF ENGLISH ICONIC WORDS DEPENDING ON DE-ICONIZATION STAGE // Pedagogical Review. 2021. Issue 1 (35). P. 122-129

The present psychosemantic study investigates visual perception of English iconic (imitative) words by Russian L2 learners. The Lexical decision task was conducted to collect the data. The participants (N = 106) were visually presented with three type of experimental stimuli: 32 iconic words divided into four groups according to their de-iconization stage (8 words per group), 32 non-iconic words and 32 non-words constructed according to English phonotactic rules. The pre-selection of iconic vocabulary into four groups was performed by the method of diachronic evaluation of the imitative lexicon. The linguistic status of iconic words was controlled for in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the 3d edition (section “Etimology”). The stimuli were presented visually in random order under a strict time limit. The parameter under investigation – the stage of de-iconization of an iconic word – refers to the degree of preservation of original iconic (according to Pierce) associative connection between form and meaning. De-iconization takes place under the influence of two system factors: regular phonetic changes (“distortion” of a word form) and semantic shifts (“expansion”, broadening of a word’s meaning). The findings of the study revealed that the participants need a different amount of time to recognize 1) iconic and non-iconic words, 2) iconic words at different stages of de-iconization. The least de-iconized words are characterized by slower recognition time and higher error rates than non-iconic words and highly de-iconized words, which makes them similar to non-words. It signifies a delay in cognitive recognition of these most “vivid” iconic words. Word recognition impairment may also be accounted for by the interference of the expressiveness parameter and by the semantic processing. It is assumed that the use of iconic words in language teaching contributes to vocabulary learning. This assumption is not fully supported by the empirical data of our study since deiconization is an important variable in psycholinguistic studies of this kind. The results of our research enable us to gain a better understanding of cognitive mechanisms of the perception of iconicity.

Keywords: psycholinguistics, sound symbolism, iconicity, phonosemantics, English, Lexical decision, visual recognition of verbal stimuli