BAB
II
DISCUSSION
A.
THEORIES
OF MEANING
1. The
referential theory
According
to the referential theory, the meaning of an expression is what it refers to,
or stands for (Lyons, 1981). E.g., ‘John’ means John. The referential theory
typically focuses on a proper name and what is named (Alston, 1967). At first,
nothing seems to be problematic: on the one hand there is the name ‘John’ and
on the other the man who is named. One variant of the theory identifies meaning
with what it refers to and another identifies meaning with the relation between
the name and what is referred to.
A
problem with the first variant, pointed out by Frege, is that two expressions
can refer to the same entity yet not have the same meaning. One does not just
by understanding the meaning of the expressions understand that they refer to
the same entity so meaning cannot be identical with the object of reference. A
difficulty with the other variant is the assumption that every word does refer
to something. There are classes of words, such as prepositions and
conjunctions, which do not seem to refer to any objects.
2
The ‘traditional’ theory
The
main idea in the ‘traditional’ theory of meaning, with its roots in Greek
philosophy, is the distinction between the meaning (intension, connotation,
Sinn, sense) of an expression and its referent (extension, denotation,
Bedeutung) (Føllesdal et al, 1990). Charles Kay Ogden illustrated the relationships
between expression, meaning and referent in a triangle.
Meaning, intension,
connotation, sense, Sinn
Expression Referent,
extension,
Denotation.
Meaning
is what the expression expresses. It is what is grasped when a person
understands the expression. When a person who knows the language hears or sees
an expression he grasps the meaning expressed. The meaning of an expression is
distinguished from its referent which is the thing we speak about when we use
the expression, what the expression refers to. The meaning is something
abstract and can only be grasped by our intellect while the referent can be
something quite concrete such as a dog, a person or a tree.
3
The ideational theory
According
to an ideational theory, words are marks of the ideas within the speaker’s mind
and communication is achieved when the words excite the same ideas in the
hearer as they stand for in the speaker. The meaning of an expression is the
idea or concept, associated with it in the mind of anyone who knows it (Lyons,
1981). Even if one at times speaks without being conscious of the associated
ideas one does not understand the word unless one could call it up
(Alston, 1967). But it does not seem to be the case that there is an idea in
one’s mind corresponding to every linguistic unit one hears or speaks. Consider
the words in the previous sentence: But - it - does - ... It does not seem
possible to produce a distinctive idea for each word.
There
are difficulties even for words for which it is easy to produce an image. A
problem is that
there
is no one-to-one correspondence between the image and the word. For instance,
the image of the word ‘dog’ could be a sleeping dog, a running dog, a beagle or
a hound. And the image of a dog can correspond to numerous words, e.g., ‘dog’,
‘warning’, ‘pet’, or ‘animal’.
Another
problem with the ideational theory is that we do not settle questions about
meaning by looking for ideas. The fact that there is public consensus on what
words mean suggests that meaning is a function of publicly observable aspects
of the use of language. This has led some theorists to base a theory of meaning
on factors present in the situation where speech occurs.
4
The stimulus-response theory
The
stimulus-response theory defines the meaning of an expression as the situation
in which the speaker utters it and the response or disposition to
respond which it calls forth in the hearer. A problem is that any word can
occur in a wide variety of situations that have nothing in common which is
distinctive of the word. Furthermore different responses may follow a given
word depending on the situation, and sometimes there follows no overt response
at all.
The
theory is burdened with the assumption that every word is a sign for a thing,
aspect, or state of affairs (Alston, 1967). Another problem is associating the
right response with the right word — it is assumed that there is a certain
response which occurs every time a word is spoken. It seems there could be an
infinite number of dispositions produced by an utterance.
Each
of the theories mentioned so far is based on an insight into the nature of
meaning: (1)
language
is used to refer to objects, (2) language is used to express our ideas, and (3)
words have
meaning
in a physical context of human activity. But it is an oversimplification to say
that meaning is identified with only one of these aspects. Most theories of
meaning are also based on the notion that a word must be followed by one
certain aspect or thing on every occasion of its use, and the theories are
therefore formulated as answers to the question ‘what sort of entity is meaning?’.
5
Meaning is use
A
different way of looking at language and meaning was established by Ludwig
Wittgenstein. His work is in a way a criticism of all the theories of meaning
mentioned above. One of the main points in the major work of the later Wittgenstein,
‘Philosophical Investigations’, is a negative one. It states what meaning is not.
His view emphasizes the use of words and language: it is the way an
expression
is
used that gives it its meaning. The meaning of an expression is identified with
its use, but meaning cannot be identified with any particular aspects of the
usage environment, neither the referent nor a mental idea. According to
Wittgenstein, it is a mistake to try to locate the meaning of a word in some realm
or other, to look for a certain sort of entity that constitutes meaning.
Instead
meaning depends on the whole context of use, the whole language game, the whole
‘form of life’ that the participants share. Wittgenstein’s primary
contribution is thus to introduce a holistic perspective on meaning.
We
have labeled this ‘usage holism’. It is not to be confused with ‘semantic
holism’, which could be described as asserting: ‘In order to understand an
expression, you need to understand a whole language.’. Usage holism, on the
other hand, could be described as follows: ‘In order to understand an
expression, you need to master a set of practical activities in which this
expression is used.
When
Wittgenstein argues for this holistic view, he exemplifies how aspects of the
usage context, other than the ideational and referential aspects, affect the
meaning of an expression, e.g., social relations between different language
users. A second contribution of Wittgenstein is hence that he has
inspired others to focus on new aspects of the usage environment, in addition
to (or opposed to) the referential and ideational aspects. Both speech act
theory and behaviorism have been influenced by Wittgenstein in this respect. Wittgenstein
emphasized that language has many different functions — not only to convey
ideas or refer to objects — and he also stressed that speaking is doing something.
Besides informing, speaking may be doing a number of things such as asking,
joking, begging, requesting, convincing, etc. Speech act theory has tried to describe
how people use language in terms of speech acts. There is a clear appeal to
aspects that lays outside the realm of the referent or the mental ideas of the language
user. The factors that make an utterance a command or a description can be,
e.g., the bodily behavior of a speaker, the eye movements, pitch, the location
of the utterance, the social role of the speaker, etc.
Speech
act theory is often labeled as a ‘meaning is use theory’ together with the
philosophy of the later Wittgenstein. Both associate the meaning of an
expression with how it is used. However, it is also important to see the
differences between the two. Searle associated meaning with a limited set of
rules for how an expression should be used to perform certain actions. With
this as a basis, he created a taxonomy of different types of speech acts. For
Wittgenstein, on the other hand, meaning is related to the whole context of use
and not only a limited set of rules. It can never be fully described in a
theory or by means of systematic philosophy.
B.
KINDS
OF MEANING
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 contractiveness
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- Contractiveness
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.
Emotive
Meaning
Emotive
meaning is the meaning according to Sipley arising from the reaction of the
speaker or the speaker’s attitude toward something or thinking or feeling.
Exemplified by the word in the sentence “you are buffalo”, it certainly raises
uneasy feeling for the listener, in other word, the buffalo has emotional
meaning, it means that someone who lazy. Thus, emotive meaning is the meaning
of a word or phrase that may cause listener emotions and it is clearly related
to feeling.
3.
Connotative
Meaning
Connotative
meaning is different from the meaning of emotive. Connotative meaning tend to
be negative while the emotive meaning is the positive meaning. connotative meaning arise as a result of association of
our feelings about what was said or heard. For example in the sentence Anita is
flower village. Word flower in the sentence is not mean as a flower but rather
an idol in the village as a result of her physical condition or beauty.
4.
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.
5.
Affective 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.
6. Reflected Meaning:
Reflected
meaning and colocative 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.
7.
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.
8.
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.
Mrs.
Smith donated the first prize
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,
-
He likes Indian good
most.
-
Indian goods he likes
most
-
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
1. John
wears a cotton shirt
2. 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.
9.
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.
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