Seven types of meaning- A topic of semantics.ppt

 A piece of language conveys its dictionary meaning,
connotations beyond the dictionary meaning,
information about the social context of language use,
the speaker’s feelings and attitudes related to the
meaning, sometimes having two dictionary meanings,
and meaning because of habit occurrence.
 Geoffrey Leech in his ‘Semantic- A Study of Meaning’
(1974) breaks down meaning into seven types or ingredients
giving primacy to conceptual meaning.

1. Conceptual or Denotative Meaning
 Conceptual meaning is also called logical or cognitive
meaning.
 It is the basic propositional meaning that corresponds to the
primary dictionary definition of a word or an expression.
 It is the essential or core meaning.
Boy = + human + male -adult.
The hierarchical structure of ‘Boy’ = + Human + Male -
Adult

• It is the literal meaning of the word indicating the idea
or concept to which it refers.
• As we define phoneme based on binary contrast, similarly we
can define sememe ‘Woman’ as = + human + female +
adult.
• 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”.
• Conceptual meaning aims to provide an appropriate
semantic representation of a sentence or statement.
• 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/literal
meaning of a word and hints at its attributes in the real world.
 Thus purely conceptual content of ‘woman’ is +human +
female+ adult but the psychosocial connotations could be
‘having maternal instinct’ or typical (rather than invariable)
attributes of womanhood such as ‘babbling’,’ experienced
in cookery’, ‘skirt or dress wearing, frail, emotional,
prone to tears ‘etc.

 It can be adopted by the viewpoint of an individual, a
group, or even a society.
 Connotations vary age to age and society to society.
 E.g. Old age ‘Woman’ - ‘Non-trouser wearing (before
second world war) or Saree wearing (in Indian
subcontinent context) must have seemed definite
connotation in the past.
 Present ‘Woman’--- Salwar-Kamiz/T-shirt/Jeans
wearing.
 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 (Related to Society)
 The meaning conveyed by the piece of language about the
social context/circumstances 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.
 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.

 Stylistic variation represents the social variation. This is
because styles show the geographical region or social
class of the speaker. Style helps us to know about the
period, field and status of the discourse.
 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).

4. Affective or Emotive Meaning
• 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.
• More personalized definition of the word than the
generalized concepts associated with the word.
• E.g. ‘home’ for a sailor/soldier or expatriate and
‘mother’ for a motherless child, will have special
effective, emotive quality.

• The personal definition of the word “Rain” would be
different to each individual.
• For Leech affective meaning refers to that meaning
which expresses the feeling and attitude of the
speaker through the use of language (attitude to
listener as well as attitude to what he is saying).

• 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 or
somewhat negative attitude towards his listener.

 Often we are more discreet (cautious) and convey our attitude
indirectly. (Pragmatics)
E.g. “I am terribly sorry but if you would be so kind as to
lower your voice a little.”
The sentence 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.
• Words like darling or sweetheart or love have inherent
emotive quality but they can also be used neutrally.

5. Reflected Meaning
Reflected meaning arises when a word has more than one conceptual
meaning or multiple conceptual meaning.
Dear, Coat, Bank
Coat:
She wore her favorite coat to keep warm in the winter.
The carpenter applied a coat of varnish to protect the wood.
Bank:
He deposited his paycheck at the bank.
The river bank was a peaceful spot for a picnic.
Dear:
She wrote a letter to her dear friend.
The vase was too dear for me to afford.

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.
 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’.
 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’.

The verbs ‘wander’ and ‘stroll’ are quasi-
synonymous- they may have almost the same
meaning but while ‘cows may wander into
another farm’, they don’t stroll into that farm
because ‘stroll’ collocates with human subject
only.
Ride and Drive

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.
 The ways we order our message also convey what is important
and what not, this is basically thematic meaning.

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.

• Alternative grammatical construction also gives
thematic meaning. For example,
1. He loves singing. (One of the things that
person loves) SVO
2. Singing he loves! (Major focus) SOV
3. He was happy and started singing. (Because he
was happy, he started to sing to express his
happiness)
4. He started singing and was happy. (First he
began his singing which eventually made him
happy.

Seven types of meaning- A topic of semantics.ppt

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Seven types of meaning- A topic of semantics.ppt