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.
Conclusion:
Study of meaning, one of the major
areas of linguistic study. Linguists have approached it in a variety of ways.
Members of the school of interpretive semantics study the structures of
language independent of their conditions of use. In contrast, the advocates of
generative semantics insist that the meaning of sentences is a function of
their use. Still another group maintains that semantics will not advance until
theorists take into account the psychological questions of how people form
concepts and how these relate to word meanings.
Source:
PM, Litton. 2009. Seven Types of Meaning in Semantics
