Semantics, Word Meaning – Associative and Denotative Meaning, Seven Types of Meaning, Unit 5 Aspects of English Language, B.A English Literatrue

   University of Madras

Syllabus with effect from 2020-2021

BA English Literature

[2^nd Year, 4^th Semester]

ASPECTS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE – II

Unit 5: Semantics

What is Semantics?

        “Semantics is the study of meanings. The term is derived from Greek semanen (to signify or mean). It concerned with the relation between words or other symbols and objects or concepts to which they refer.

        Semantics is that aspect of linguistics which deals with the relations between referents (names) and referends (things)—that is, linguistic levels (words, expressions, phrases) and the objects or concepts or ideas to which they refer—and with the history and changes in the meaning of words.

        Diachronic (historical) semantics studies semantic change, whereas synchronic semantics accounts for semantic relationship, simple or multiple.

 

5.1 Word Meaning – Associative and Denotative Meaning

 

Two Types of Meaning

        Yule (2014) makes a broad distinction between conceptual meaning and associative meaning.

Associative (connotative) meaning.

        However, different people might have different associations or connotations attached to a word like needle. They might associate it with 'pain,' or 'illness,‘. 'blood,' 'drugs,' 'thread,' or 'knitting.

        The connotation of a word can be positive, negative, or neutral. It can also be either cultural or personal. The table below displays the conceptual and associative meanings of  two words:“ blood” and “pig”

        Associative meaning is a result of cognitive association of ideas or things. It combines several types of meaning that are closely related, such as connotative, collocative, social, affective, and reflected meanings.

Denotative (Conceptual / literal/ dictionary)Meaning:

        Denotative meaning covers those basic, essential components of meaning that are conveyed by the literal use of a word.

It is the type of meaning that dictionaries are designed to describe. Some of the basic components of a word like needle in English might include 'thin, sharp, steel instrument. Denotation is a word's plain and direct meaning or meanings. It's what the word explicitly means.

   

5.2 Seven Types of Meaning (logical or Conceptual, Connotative, social, affective, reflected, collective and thematic)

Seven Types of Meaning:

        Semantic is the study of meanings. Meaning comprise not one, but some kinds of meaning. Geoffrey Leech in his ‘Semantic- A Study of meaning’ (1974) breaks down meaning into seven types or ingredients giving primacy to conceptual meaning. He divides meaning into seven, they are called seven types of meanings, namely:

1.   conceptual meaning

2.   connotative meaning

3.   social meaning

4.   affective meaning

5.   reflective meaning

6.   collocative meaning

7.   thematic meaning

i) Conceptual Meaning:

        Conceptual meaning is also called denotative or cognitive meaning. 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’.

The two principles by Leech, the principles of contrastiveness and principle of structure.

        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.

ii) 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. 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.

         Sometimes 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.

 

iii) 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.

iv) 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.     

        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”.

v) 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.).

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.

vi) 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.

vii) 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.

        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.

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