Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Background of the Research
Medical students are required to learn Medical English courses besides thegeneral English curriculum. When asked to compare the two courses, medicalstudents complain that Medical English Vocabulary is a tough nut compared to that ofthe general English. The difficulties of the Medical English Lexicon lie in the largequantity of lexicons from many fields, such as medicine, biology, chemistry andenormous amounts of derivatives and compounds. Additionally, Medical EnglishLexicon is noted for its complexity. The longest word in the English language, forexample, consists of 1,913 letters and it comes just from the Medical EnglishVocabulary. Despite the difficulties, having a good grasp of the Medical EnglishLexicon is regarded as essential for the students in Medical English course and a keyfactor in successful language learning.Medical English, as a subcategory of academic English, is referred to asEnglish for Medical Purpose (EMP). Medical English lexicon, as complicated andarbitrary as it is, arouses the interests of the linguists. Consequently, researchersconduct detailed researches to unveil the features of the EMP lexicon and the learningstrategy of the Medical English Words.In view of iconicity theory, there is a natural resemblance or analogy betweenthe linguistic form and the object it refers to. According to Jacobson, iconicity is auniversal phenomenon in language. As a component of the language, Medical Englishis iconic as well. Sophisticated and random as they appear, Medical English Words doconform to the iconicity theory. To be more specific, there exists a special relation inmedical lexis between its linguistic form and meaning. In fact, there are four types oficonicity among the medical vocabulary: phonological iconicity, morphologicaliconicity, semantic iconicity and etymological iconicity.
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Research
Academic linguistics, involving clinical linguistics, nursing linguistics, isspringing up recently. It’s a relatively new research field which boosts lot of riddles tobe explored. For students of medicine majors, they need to deal with Medical Englishwhich is apparently too complicated to master. Those words are long and seeminglyrandomly sequenced, compared to general English. However, those terminologieshave their own specific traits of which we can take advantage to better our knowledgein Medical English.This paper aims to research Medical English Vocabulary from the perspectiveof iconicity theory. The study not only reveals the iconic feature of the medical lexisbut also offer a clue to better acquire medical vocabulary. The research also elicitsseveral reflections which point out that some strategies can be applied to improve memorization of Medical English Vocabulary.It is hoped that this paper can also supplement the iconicity study and develop anew approach to the Medical English Vocabulary memorization.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Iconicity Theory
The history of the debate over the arbitrariness and iconicity of the linguisticsign can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. Plato, a naturalists, maintains therepresentational nature of language. For Plato, the aspects of the nominal world serveas the primary referents for names. However, in Aristotle’s essay on Interpretation, heargued that a name is a spoken sound sign，英语毕业论文，英语论文范文 |
