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Semantics 2

The document discusses seven types of meaning in semantics, including conceptual, connotative, social, affective, reflected, collocative, and thematic meanings. It emphasizes the importance of conceptual meaning as the core of linguistic communication and explores how connotative meaning varies across cultures and contexts. Additionally, it highlights the role of social and affective meanings in conveying speaker attitudes and social circumstances, as well as the significance of reflected, collocative, and thematic meanings in understanding language structure and use.

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Radwa Ayman
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15 views5 pages

Semantics 2

The document discusses seven types of meaning in semantics, including conceptual, connotative, social, affective, reflected, collocative, and thematic meanings. It emphasizes the importance of conceptual meaning as the core of linguistic communication and explores how connotative meaning varies across cultures and contexts. Additionally, it highlights the role of social and affective meanings in conveying speaker attitudes and social circumstances, as well as the significance of reflected, collocative, and thematic meanings in understanding language structure and use.

Uploaded by

Radwa Ayman
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Radwa Ayman

Semantics 2 (Types of meaning)


As highlighted in semantics 1, the term ‘meaning’ isn’t a well-defined one. In order to make
sense of its reference in the semantic field, linguists distinguished seven types of meaning and
showed how they all fit into the total composite effect of linguistic communication. These types
include conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected
meaning, collocative meaning, and thematic meaning.

2.1 Conceptual Meaning:


Conceptual meaning, which is sometimes referred to as ‘denotative’ or ‘cognitive’ meaning, is
considered as the central factor in linguistic communication. According to Leech (1981), this
type of meaning has a complex and sophisticated organization similar to the syntactic and
phonological levels of language. He explained that there are two structural principles that
govern all the linguistic levels: the principle of contractiveness and the principle of structure.

First, the principle of contrastiveness means that any linguistic item can be defined in terms of
‘contrastive features’. For example, in phonology, the sound /p/ can be defined in terms of the
features it possesses and those it doesn’t possess: + bilabial, - voice, + stop, - nasal. The same
principle can be applied to the conceptual meaning of language. For example, the meaning of
the word woman can be specified as + human, - male, + adult, which distinguishes it from boy,
which can be defined as + human, + male, - adult. Second, the principle of structure means that
any larger linguistic unit is built up out of smaller units. Such a principle enables us to analyze a
sentence syntactically into its constituent parts. For example, a sentence is made up of subject,
which consists of determiner and noun, and predicate, which consists of verb and complement.
These two principles represent how language is organized on the paradigmatic1 and
syntagmatic2 axes of linguistic structure. That leads to a general acknowledgement: any piece of
language is structured simultaneously on three levels, semantics, syntax, and phonology.

1
It refers to the relationship between linguistic elements that can substitute for each other in the same context. For
example, I drink tea (coffee/ water/ milk). There is a paradigmatic relation between these words: tea, coffee, water, and
milk. While using any of these alternatives will create a new conceptual meaning, it will maintain the same grammatical
structure.
2
It refers to the relationship between linguistic items that are combined to create a sequence or structure. For example, in
‘I drink tea’, I combines with ‘drink’ and ‘tea’ to form a grammatical structure.
This means each sentence has a ‘phonological representation’, a ‘syntactic representation’, and
a ‘semantic representation’. The conceptual meaning refers to the semantic representation of a
sentence, distinguishing its meaning from all other possible sentence meanings in the language.
Hence, the conceptual meaning is the essential part of language, which can scarcely be defined
without referring to this type of meaning.

2.2 Connotative Meaning:


Connotative meaning refers to the communicative value of an expression (what it refers to).
The notion of ‘reference’ sometimes overlaps with conceptual meaning, as it deals with the
physical properties of a linguistic item, such as ‘a woman’: + human, - male, + adult. However,
this notion covers also the psychological and social properties of linguistic items. These
properties are more related to connotative meaning than to conceptual one. Simply put,
connotative meaning embraces the putative/ expected properties of the referent, due to the
viewpoint of an individual, a group of people or a whole society. Therefore, using the same
lexical item ‘woman’, in the past, it referred to some attributes such as ‘irrational, emotional,
prone to tears’. Later on, this lexical item became associated with other attributes, such as
‘hard-working, compassionate, sensitive’. This highlights two key facts about connotative
meaning; first, it varies from age to age and from society to society, second, it reflects real
world experiences- what one associates with an expression when they use or hear it.

It's also worth drawing attention between the distinction between this type of meaning and the
conceptual one. Connotative meaning is incidental to language rather than an essential part of it.
Unlike conceptual meaning, connotative meaning is unstable since it varies considerably
according to culture, historical period, and the experience of the individual. Additionally, this
type of meaning is indeterminate and open-ended in a sense in which conceptual meaning is
not. To clarify, connotative meaning is open-ended like our knowledge and beliefs about the
universe are. In contrast, the conceptual meaning of a word or sentence can be codified in terms
of a limited number of symbols, and the semantic representation can be specified by means of a
finite number of rules.

2.3 Social and Affective Meaning:


These two types of meaning are more related to the situation in which an utterance takes
place. As for the social meaning, it refers to what a piece of language conveys about the social
circumstances of its use. Simply, this type of meaning is decoded through the speaker’s
recognition of different levels of style within the same language. For instance, some linguistic
expressions can reveal information about the relation between the speaker and the hearer,
whether these expressions are formal, colloquial, or slang. Linguists have noticed several
dimensions of socio-stylistic variation, including variation according to social class, historical
period, a specific fields (e.g., law or science), etc.
Therefore, it isn’t surprising that there are no words with exactly the same stylistic meaning;
there are no true synonyms. While two words might have the same conceptual meaning, they
rarely share the same stylistic overtone.
For example, the following words share the same conceptual meaning, but they differ in social
meaning:
- domicile (official)
- residence (formal)
- abode (poetic)
- home (general)
The stylistic variation can be noticed at the sentence level as well. For example, the following
sentences have the same conceptual meaning, but different styles.
a.) They chucked a stone at the cops, and then did a bunk with the loot.
b.) After casting a stone at the police, they absconded with the money.
The first sentence might be said in a conversation between two criminals, whereas the second
one might appear in an official report by the chief inspector.

Moving to the affective meaning, it refers to what conveys the personal feelings or attitude of
the speaker towards the listener. In some cases, such feelings are obvious. For example, ‘You’re
a vicious tyrant, and I hate you’ leaves the listener with no doubt regarding the feelings of the
addresser to the addressee. However, in other cases, the speaker’s attitude is hidden in different
levels of politeness. For example, asking someone to be quiet can be expressed in two different
ways:
a.) I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but I wonder if you would be so kind to lower your voice a
little.
b.) Will you belt up.
The speaker’s attitude can also be understood from their tone of voice, whether they use high-
pitched tone or a lower one.

4.2 Reflected and Collocative Meaning:


Reflected meaning arises when a word has multiple conceptual meanings, especially when
one sense is more commonly used than the others. For example, in a church context, the
expressions ‘The Comforter and the Holy Ghost’ refer to the Third Person of Trinity. However,
one might confuse them with the everyday meanings of ‘comfort’ and ‘ghost’ because these
senses are more commonly used than those in religious context. Another example is the use of
‘deer’ in a poem, the poet used it in the sense of ‘expensively’, but readers might link it to the
sense ‘beloved’ since it the most commonly used meaning of this term.

As for the collocative meaning, it consists of the associations a word acquires on account of
the meanings of words which tend to occur in its environment. For instance, ‘pretty’ and
‘handsome’ share common ground in the meaning ‘good-looking’, they collocate with different
nouns: pretty (girl/ village/ woman/ flower/ color), handsome (man, car, typewriter). Also, while
some linguistic items are quasi-synonymous, they cannot be used interchangeably in all
contexts. For example, we say ‘cows wander, but not cows stroll’, and ‘the boy trembles with
fear, but quivers with excitement’.

2.5 Thematic Meaning:


It refers to what is communicated through the organization of the message, in terms of
ordering, focus, and emphasis. For example,
a.) Ms. Mary donated the first prize.
b.) The first prize was donated by Ms. Mary.

While these two sentences share the same conceptual meaning, they have different
communicative values since they suggest different contexts: the active sentence answers the
implicit question ‘What did Ms. Mary donate?’ while the passive sentence answers‘who
donated the first prize?’ In other words, thematic meaning is mainly a matter of choice between
alternatives grammatical structures, such as the difference between ‘a man is waiting in the hall/
There is a man waiting in the hall’.
That being said, the emphasis can be demonstrated by using different lexical items. For
instance,
a.) My brother owns the largest shop in the town.
b.) The largest shop in the town belongs to my brother.

Another way to highlight information in a sentence is through stress and intonation. New
information typically carries the main stress of the sentence, e.g., Bill uses an electric razor,
with ‘electric’ carrying the main stress. The given information in this sentence is ‘Bill uses a
razor’, while the new information is that ‘it is electric.’
Reference:
Leech, G. (1981). Semantics: The study of meaning (2nd ed.). Penguin Books.

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