Iconic Note as Principle of Motivation in Tonni Morrison's Sula

Abstract

The current study proposes to give an insight about iconic note as a concept of motivation in literary language applied on one of the prominent novels in African- American literature which is Morrison's Sula. Iconic property is considered as one of the prominent principles in motivation of language in which there is a similarity between form and concept. The study of the iconic note in literary works has become significant after the emergence of modernist in arts and literature whereas prior to that, Iconic note as a source of motivation was considered as salient characteristic of primitive language and poetic language only. The problem of the study will explain how Morrison's text constructed to decline from the concept of arbitrariness and to meet the concept of motivation. By achieving the objective of the research, the study will focus on two important tropes which are metaphor and metonymy and how they co-occur in literary text to serve as ingredients of iconic perspective of motivated language.