ABSTRACT
This chapter largely concerns the production of iconicity by official sources of ideological unity, especially officers of the bureaucratic nation-state. Verbal iconicity is usually treated, in its synchronic and diachronic versions, respectively, as folk etymology and philological, or academic, etymology. Folk etymology is further differentiated from its scholarly counterpart by being largely dismissed as the manifestation of unconscious error, as in Bolinger's characterization of it as a kind of auditory malapropism. Students of culture often disagree about the attribution of a particular cultural link with the past. They are also often unwilling to confront the contingent nature of the resemblances in which such links subsist. The rhetorical uses of iconicity go far beyond nationalism alone. But the paradigm offered by nationalistic folklore illustrates with a wealth of detail how effectively the iconic basis of classification can be employed for rhetorical ends, with or without verbal explication. It is the primary line of defense for the secrets of cultural intimacy.
