SEMANTICS
Semantics is the study of
the meaning of linguistic expressions.
Seven
Types of Meaning
A
piece of language conveys its dictionary meaning, connotations beyond the
dictionary meaning, information about the social context of language use,
speaker’s feelings and attitudes rubbing off of one meaning on the another
meaning of the same word when it has two meanings and meaning because of habit
occurrence.
Broadly
speaking, ‘meaning’ means the sum total of communicated through language.
Words, Phrases and sentences have meanings which are studies in semantics.
Geoffrey
Leech in his ‘Semantic- A Study of meaning’ (1974) breaks down meaning
into seven types or ingredients giving primacy to conceptual meaning.
The
Seven types of meaning according to Leech are as follows.
1) Conceptual or Denotative Meaning:
Conceptual
meaning is also called logical or cognitive meaning. It is the basic
propositional meaning which corresponds to the primary dictionary definition.
Such a meaning is stylistically neutral and objective as opposed to other kinds
of associative meanings. Conceptual
Meanings
are the essential or core meaning while other six types are the peripheral. It
is peripheral in as sense that it is non-essential. They are stylistically
marked and subjective kind of meanings. Leech gives primacy to conceptual
meaning because it has sophisticated organization based on the principle of
contrastiveness and hierarchical structure.
E.g.
/P/ can be described as- voiceless + bilabial + plosive.
Similarly
Boy
= + human + male-adult.
The
hierarchical structure of ‘Boy’ = + Human + Male-Adult
Or
“Boy” =Human – Male/Female-adult in a rough way.
Conceptual
meaning is the literal meaning of the word indicating the idea or concept to which
it refers. The concept is minimal unit of meaning which could be called
‘sememe’. As we define phoneme on the basis of binary contrast, similarly we
can define sememe ‘Woman’ as = + human + female + adult. If any
of these attribute changes the concept cease to be the same.
Conceptual
meaning deals with the core meaning of expression. It is the denotative or
literal meaning. It is essential for the functioning of language. For example,
a part of the conceptual meaning of ‘Needle” may be “thin”, “sharp” or
“instrument”.
The
organization of conceptual meaning is based on two structural principles-
Contrastiveness and the principle of structure. The conceptual meanings can be
studied typically in terms of contrastive features.
For
example the word “woman” can be shown as:
“Woman
= + Human, -Male, + Adult”.
On
the contrary, word
“Boy” can be realized as:-
“Boy
= “+ human, + male, - Adult”.
By
the principle of structure, larger units of language are built up out smaller
units or smaller units or smaller units are built out larger ones.
The
aim of conceptual meaning is to provide an appropriate semantic representation
to a sentence or statement. A sentence is made of abstract symbols. Conceptual
meaning helps us to distinguish one meaning from the meaning of other
sentences. Thus, conceptual meaning is an essential part of language. A
language essentially depends on conceptual meaning for communication. The
conceptual meaning is the base for all the other types of meaning.
2)
Connotative Meaning:
Connotative
meaning is the communicative value of an expression over and above its purely
conceptual content. It is something that goes beyond mere referent of a word
and hints at its attributes in the real world. It is something more than the
dictionary meaning. Thus purely conceptual content of ‘woman’ is +human +
female+ adult but the psychosocial connotations could be ‘gregarious’,
‘having maternal instinct’ or typical (rather than invariable)
attributes of womanhood such as ‘babbling’,’ experienced in cookery’, ‘skirt
or dress wearing ‘etc. Still further connotative meaning can embrace
putative properties of a referent due to viewpoint adopted by individual,
group, and society as a whole. So in the past woman was supposed to have
attributes like frail, prone to tears, emotional, irrigational, inconstant ,
cowardly etc. as well as more positive qualities such gentle, sensitive,
compassionate, hardworking etc. Connotations vary age to age and society to
society.
E.g. Old age ‘Woman’ - ‘Non-trouser wearing or sari wearing’
in Indian context must have seemed definite connotation in the past.
Present
‘Woman’---- Salwar/T-shirt/Jeans wearing.
Some
times connotation varies from person to person also
.
E.g. connotations of the word ‘woman’ for misogynist and a person of feminist
vary.
The
boundary between conceptual and connotative seems to be analogous. Connotative
meaning is regarded as incidental, comparatively unstable, in determinant, open
ended, variable according to age, culture and individual, whereas conceptual
meaning is not like that . It can be codified in terms of limited symbols.
3)
Social Meaning:
The
meaning conveyed by the piece of language about the social context of its use
is called the social meaning. The decoding of a text is dependent on our knowledge
of stylistics and other variations of language. We recognize some words or
pronunciation as being dialectical i.e. as telling us something about the
regional or social origin of the speaker. Social meaning is related to the
situation in which an utterance is used.
It
is concerned with the social circumstances of the use of a linguistic
expression. For example, some dialectic words inform us about the regional and
social background of the speaker. In the same way, some stylistic usages let us
know something of the social relationship between the speaker and the hearer
E.g.
“I ain’t done nothing”
The
line tells us about the speaker and that is the speaker is probably a black
American, underprivileged and uneducated. Another example can be
“Come
on yaar, be a sport. Don’t be Lallu”
The
social meaning can be that of Indian young close friends.
Stylistic
variation represents the social variation. This is because styles show the
geographical region social class of the speaker. Style helps us to know about
the period, field and status of the discourse. Some words are similar to others
as far as their conceptual meaning is concerned. But they have different
stylistic meaning. For example, ‘steed ’, ‘horse and ‘nag’ are synonymous. They
all mean a kind of animal i.e. Horse. But they differ in style and so have
various social meaning. ‘Steed’ is used in poetry; ‘horse’ is used in general,
while ‘nag’ is slang. The word ‘Home’ can have many use also like domicile (
official), residence (formal) abode (poetic) , home (ordinary use).
Stylistic
variation is also found in sentence. For example, two criminals will express
the following sentence
“They
chucked the stones at the cops and then did a bunk with the look”
(Criminals after the event)
But the same ideas will be revealed by the chief inspector
to his officials by the following sentence.
“After casting the stones at the police, they abandoned with
money.”
(Chief
Inspector in an official report)
Thus
through utterances we come to know about the social facts, social situation,
class, region, and speaker-listener relations by its style and dialect used in
sentences.
The
illocutionary force of an utterance also can have social meaning. According to
the social situation, a sentence may be uttered as request, an apology, a
warning or a threat, for example, the sentence,
“I
haven’t got a knife” has the common meaning in isolation.
But the sentence uttered to waiter mean a request for a knife’
Thus
we can understand that the connotative meaning plays a very vital role in the
field of semantics and in understanding the utterances and sentences in
different context.
4)
Affective or Emotive Meaning:
For some linguists it refers to emotive association or
effects of words evoked in the reader, listener. It is what is conveyed about
the personal feelings or attitude towards the listener.
E.g. ‘home’ for a sailor/soldier or expatriate
and ‘mother’ for a motherless child, a married woman
(esp. in Indian context) will have special effective, emotive quality.
In affective meaning, language is used to express personal
feelings or attitude to the listener or to the subject matter of his discourse.
For Leech affective meaning refers to what is convey about
the feeling and attitude of the speak through use of language (attitude to
listener as well as attitude to what he is saying). Affective meaning is often
conveyed through conceptual, connotative content of the words used
E.g. “you are a vicious tyrant and a villainous
reprobation and I hate you”
Or “I hate you, you idiot”.
We are left with a little doubt about the speaker’s feelings
towards the listener. Here speaker seems to have a very negative attitude
towards his listener. This is called affective meaning.
But very often we are more discreet (cautious) and convey
our attitude indirectly.
E.g. “I am terribly sorry but if you would be so kind as to
lower your voice a
little”
. Conveys our irritation in a scaled down manner for the
sake of politeness. Intonation and voice quality are also important here. Thus
the sentence above can be uttered in biting sarcasm and the impression of
politeness maybe reversed while –
e.g.
“Will you belt up?”-
can be turned into a playful remark between intimates if said with the
intonation of a request.
Words like darling, sweetheart or hooligan, vandal have
inherent emotive quality and they can be used neutrally.
I.A. Richards argued that emotive meaning distinguishes
literature or poetic language from factual meaning of science. Finally it must
be noted that affective meaning is largely a parasitic category. It overlaps
heavily with style, connotation and conceptual content.
5)
Reflected Meaning:
Reflected meaning and collocative meaning involve
interconnection At
the lexical level of language, Reflected meaning arises when a word has more
than one conceptual meaning or multiple conceptual meaning. In such cases while
responding to one sense of the word we partly respond to another sense of the
word too. Leech says that in church service ‘the comforter and the Holy Ghost
’refer to the third in Trinity. They are religious words. But unconsciously
there is a response to their non-religious meanings too. Thus the ‘comforter’ sounds warm and comforting while the ‘Ghost’ sounds ‘awesome’ or even
‘dreadful’. One sense of the word seems to rub off on another especially
through relative frequency and familiarity (e.g. a ghost is more frequent and familiar
in no religious sense.).
In
poetry too we have reflected meaning as in the following lines from ‘Futility’
‘Are
limbs so dear achieved, are sides,
Full
nerved still warm-too hard to stir’
Owen
here uses ‘dear’ in the sense of expensiveness. - But the sense of
beloved is also eluded.
E.g.
Daffodils
“The could not but be gay
In
such jocund company”
The
word ‘gay’ was frequently used in the time of William Wordsworth but the
word now is used for ‘homosexuality’.
In
such type cases of multiple meaning, one meaning of the word pushes the other
meaning to the background. Then the dominant suggestive power of that word
prevails. This may happen because of the relative frequency or familiarity of
the dominant meaning. This dominant meaning which pushes the other meaning at
the background is called the reflected meaning.
Reflected
meaning is also found in taboo words. For examples are terms like erection,
intercourse, ejaculation. The word ‘intercourse’ immediately reminds us
of its association with sex (sexual intercourse). The sexual association of the
word drives away its innocent sense, i.e. ‘communication’. The taboo
sense of the word is so dominant that its non-taboo sense almost dies out. In
some cases, the speaker avoids the taboo words and uses their alternative word
in order to avoid the unwanted reflected meaning. For example, as Bloomfield
has pointed out, the word ‘Cock’ is replaced by speakers, they use the
word ‘rooster’ to indicate the general meaning of the word and avoid its
taboo sense. These words have non-sexual meanings too. (E.g. erection of a
building, ejaculate-throw out somebody) but because of their frequency in the
lit of the physiology of sex it is becoming difficult to use them in their
innocent/nonsexual sense.
Thus
we can see that reflected meaning has great importance in the study of
semantics.
6)
Collocative Meaning:
Collocative
meaning is the meaning which a word acquires in the company of certain words.
Words collocate or co-occur with certain words only e.g. Big business not large
or great.Collocative meaning refers to associations of a word because of its
usual or habitual co-occurrence with certain types of words. ‘Pretty’
and ‘handsome’ indicate ‘good looking’.
However,
they slightly differ from each other because of collocation or co-occurrence.
The word ‘pretty’ collocates with – girls, woman, village, gardens,
flowers, etc.
On
the other hand, the word ‘handsome’ collocates with – ‘boys’ men, etc.
so ‘pretty woman’ and ‘handsome man’. While different kinds of
attractiveness, hence ‘handsome woman’ may mean attractive but in a mannish
way. The verbs ‘wander’ and ‘stroll’ are quasi-synonymous- they
may have almost the same meaning but while ‘cows may wonder into another farm’,
they don’t stroll into that farm because ‘stroll’ collocates with human
subject only. Similarly one ‘trembles with fear’ but ‘quivers with excitement’.
Collocative meanings need to be invoked only when other categories of meaning
don’t apply. Generalizations can be made in case of other meanings while
collocative meaning is simply on idiosyncratic property of individual words.
Collocative meaning has its importance and it is a marginal kind of category.
7)
Thematic Meaning:
It
refers to what is communicated by the way in which a speaker or a writer
organizes the message in terms of ordering focus and emphasis .Thus active is
different from passive though its conceptual meaning is the same. Various parts
of the sentence also can be used as subject, object or complement to show
prominence. It is done through focus, theme (topic) or emotive emphasis.
Thematic meaning helps us to understand the message and its implications
properly. For example, the following statements in active and passive voice
have same conceptual meaning but different communicative values.
e.g.
1) Mrs. Smith donated the first prize
2) The first prize was donated by Mrs. Smith.
In
the first sentence “who gave away the prize “is more important, but in
the second sentence “what did Mrs. Smith gave is important”. Thus the
change of focus change the meaning also.
The
first suggests that we already know Mrs. Smith (perhaps through earlier
mention) its known/given information while it’s new information.
Alternative
grammatical construction also gives thematic meaning. For example,
1) He likes Indian good most.
2) Indian goods he likes most
3) It is the Indian goods he likes most.
Like
the grammatical structures, stress and intonation also make the message
prominent. For example, the contrastive stress on the word ‘cotton’ in
the following sentence give prominence to the information
- John wears a cotton shirt
- The kind of shirt that john
wears is cotton one.
Thus
sentences or pairs of sentences with similar conceptual meaning differ their
communicative value. This is due to different grammatical constructions or
lexical items or stress and intonations. Therefore they are used in different
contents.
“Ten
thousand saw I at a glance”
Wordsworth
here inverts the structure to focus on ‘ten thousand”
.
Sometimes
thematic contrast i.e. contrasts between given and new information can be
conveyed by lexical means.
e.g.
1)
John owns the biggest shop in London
2)
The biggest shop in London belongs to John.
The
ways we order our message also convey what is important and what not. This is
basically thematic meaning.
Associative
Meaning:
Leech
uses this as an umbrella term for the remaining 5 types of meanings(
connotative, social, affective, reflective and collocative).All these have more
in common with connotative than conceptual meaning. They all have the same open
ended, variable character and can be analyzed in terms of scales or ranges (
more/less) than in either or contrastive terms. These meanings contain many
imponderable factors. But conceptual meaning is stable
Summary
of Seven Types of Meaning.
1.
Conceptual Meaning = Logical, cognitive or connotative content.
2.
Connotative Meaning = What is communicated by virtue of what language
refers
3.
Social Meaning = What is communicated of the social circumstances of
Language
4.
Affective Meaning = What is communicated of the feelings and attitudes
of
the
Speaker through language.
5.
Reflected Meaning = What is communicated through associations with
another
Sense of the same world.
6.
Collocative Meaning = What is communicated through associations with
words
which co-occur with another word.
7.
Thematic Meaning = What is communicated by the way in which the
message
is organized in terms of order and emphasis.
Semantics
Examples
Multiple
Meanings
One part of studying a language is
knowing the many meanings of individual words. Here are some examples of words
with more than one meaning:
- A water pill at first glance could be a pill with water
in it; but, it is understood to be a diuretic that causes a person to lose
water from his body.
- Crash can mean auto accident, a drop in the Stock
Market, to attend a party without being invited, ocean waves hitting the
shore or the sound of a cymbals being struck together.
- A child’s alphabet block could be described as a wooden
cube, learning aid, toy or block.
- Some see the glass half empty and others see the glass
half full.
- A flowering plant could be referred to as a weed or a
garden flower.
https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~rthomaso/documents/general/what-is-semantics.html
http://universeofenglish.blogspot.co.id/2009/02/seven-types-of-meaning-in-semantics.html
Read more at http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-semantics.html#STOxpiMoGJcMcrUE.99
