While speculations on form–meaning resemblances in language go back millennia, the experimental study of iconicity is only about a century old. Here we take stock of experimental work on iconicity and present a double special issue with a diverse set of new contributions. We contextualise the work by introducing a typology of approaches to iconicity in language. Some approaches construe iconicity as a discrete property that is either present or absent; others treat it as involving semiotic relationships that come in kinds; and yet others see it as a gradient substance that comes in degrees. We show the benefits and limitations that come with each of these construals and stress the importance of developing accounts that can fluently switch between them. With operationalisations of iconicity that are well defined yet flexible enough to deal with differences in tasks, modalities, and levels of analysis, experimental research on iconicity is well equipped to contribute to a comprehensive science of language.

In recent years, it has become common to see claims that the doctrine of legitimate expectations has no sufficiently defined purpose, and that administrative law scholars should do more theoretical work to bring coherence to this area of law. In this paper, I suggest this ‘conceptual critique’ of legitimate expectations is misplaced and that, instead, it reveals a much wider failing of contemporary administrative law scholarship. First, I show how there has not yet been, and is unlikely to be, a satisfactory answer to the conceptual critique. Following on from this premise, I suggest that the assumptions underlying the conceptual critique are faulty and, administrative lawyers need to fundamentally alter and expand how they study legitimate expectations. The aim now, I argue, must be to move towards providing an account of the practice of legitimate expectations in the wider context of public administration. My specific argument in this paper is thus a case for a significant reorientation and an expansion of the study of how law protects legitimate expectations, but the wider suggestion is that the same shift is required in administrative law scholarship generally.