In his talk, Dr. Marcus Perlman will argue that language is iconic to its core, across timescales (momentary, ontogenetic, cultural, phylogenetic) and across levels of linguistic structure (phonology and phonetics, morphology and lexicon, syntax, prosody). Perlman's argument will focus on proving two critical claims: 1) Vocal symbol systems are readily grounded in iconicity, just as gestural systems; and 2) Iconicity permeates spoken vocabularies, including English – a language that has been previously described as iconically impoverished.