SEVEN TYPES OF MEANING

SEMANTICS

 SEVEN TYPES OF MEANING

A word is the smallest unit of spoken language which has meaning and can stand alone, it is a written representation of one or more sounds which can be spoken to represent an idea, object, action, etc. in order to be understood by the people, a word must have a meaning.

Most words have more than one meaning, it is the characteristic of words that a single word may have several meaning, in fact, words may play an enormous part in our life. Words are used to express something and also conveys feelings about we are describing. Words are used not in isolation but related to human situation. It is through our experience with them in human situation that they take on meaning.

If we talk about words, we can not avoid talking about the study of meaning (semantics). The meaning of word is often complex, having such component   as a picture, an idea, a quality, a relationship and personal feelings and association. Lyons 1977:643 in Palmer1981:40-41) suggested that we should draw a distinction between sentence meaning and utterance meaning, the sentence meaning being directly predictable from the grammatical and lexical features of the sentence, while utterance meaning includes all the various types of meaning, then, is the part of meaning of a sentence that we are going to discuss in the next following. Lyons states that, utterance meaning is the part of meaning of a sentence that is directly related to grammatical and lexical features, but is obtained either from associated prosodic and paralinguistic features or from the content, linguistic and non-linguistic. The seven types of meaning are as follows:      

1. Conceptual Meaning.

Conceptual meaning is sometimes called denotative meaning or cognitive meaning, it is widely assumed to be the central factor in linguistic communication. Larson noted that denotative meaning is also called as primary meaning, that is the meaning suggested by the word when it used alone. It is the first meaning or usage which a word will suggest to most people when the word is said in isolation. it is the meaning  learned early in life and likely to have reference to a physical situation (Larson, 1984: 100)

      The denotation of word is its agreed-upon sense-what it refers to, stands for, or designates, a part from the feeling it may call up, and this again is able for a good deal on the context the words that appears in.

      It is said that the aim of denotative meaning is to provide, for any given interpretation of a sentence, a configuration of abstract symbols, in which shows exactly what we need to know if we are to distinguish that meaning from all other possible sentence meaning in the language.

2. Connotative Meaning.

As we experience, words are human situations, they not only take on certain denotation, but also often acquire individual flavors. They have come to have emotive tone, the associations, and suggestiveness of the situation in which they have been a part. For example let us examine the words “brink”. This denotes on “edge”. However in the phrase “The brink of the cliff” or” the brink of disaster”, this word suggest danger and its emotive tone is that of fear.

According to Leech (1974: 40-41) connotative meaning is the communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content. It will be clear if we are talking about connotation, we are in fact talking about the “real word experience”. Someone associates with an expression when someone uses and hears it. The fact that if we compared connotative meaning with denotative meaning is that connotations are relatively unstable; that is they vary considerably we have seen, according to culture, historical period, and the experience of the individual. Although all the speaker of particular language speaks the language exactly the same conceptual framework, actually each of them has individual perception of words. Connotative meaning is indeterminate and open in the same way as our knowledge and belief about the universe are opened-ended. Connotations play a major role in the language of literature, of politics, of advertising, and a greeting card.

3. Stylistic Meaning.

Stylistic meaning is that which a piece of language conveys about the circumstances of its use. A recent account of English has recognized some main dimensions of stylistic variation. For instance:

1.      They chucked a stone at the cops, and then did a bunk with the loot.

2.      After casting a stone at the police, they absconded with the money.

Sentence (1) could be said by the two criminals, talking casually about the crime afterwards; sentence (2) might be said by the chief of the police  in making the official report; both could describe the same happening (Leech, 1974: 15)

4. Affective Meaning.

Affective meaning is a sort of meaning which  an effect the personal feeling of speakers, including his/her attitude to the listener, or his/her attitude to something he/she talking about. In order to get people attention to be quiet, we might say either (1)”I’m terribly sorry to interrupt,  but I wonder if you would be so kind as to lower your voice as a little” or (2) “Will you belt up”. Factors such as intonation and voice timbre are also important here. The impression of politeness in the sentence (1) can be reserved by tone of biting sarcasm; sentence (2) can be turn into a playful remark between intimates if delivered with the intonation of a mild request.

5. Reflected Meaning.

Reflected meaning involves an interconnection on the lexical level of language, it is the meaning, which arises in case of multiple conceptual meaning, when one senses of word forms part of our response to another sense. For instance, on hearing the Church service, the synonymous expressions The Comforter and The Holy Ghost both refer to the Third Trinity, but the Comforter sounds warm and comforting, while the Holy Ghost sounds awesome.

6. Collocative Meaning.

Collocative meaning consists of the associations a word acquire s on account of the meanings of the words, which tends to occur in its environment. For instance the words pretty and handsome share common ground in the meaning of good looking. But may be distinguished by the range of noun in which they are like to occur or collocate; Pretty woman and handsome man. The ranges may well match although they suggest a different kind of attractiveness of the adjectives.

7.  Thematic Meaning.

This is the final category of meaning, thematic meaning is the meaning that is communicated by the way in which the speaker or writer organizes the message, in terms of ordering, focus, and emphasis. It is often felt an active sentence such as (1) below has a different meaning from its passive equivalent (2) although in conceptual content they seem to be the same (Leech. 1974: 19)

1.      Mrs. Bessie Smith donated the first prize.

2.      The first prize was donated by Mrs. Bessie Smith

We can assume that the active sentence answers an implicit question “what did Mrs. Bessie Smith donate?”, while the passive sentence answer the implicit question “who donates the first prize?”, that in other words (1) in contrast to se (2) suggest that we know who Mrs. Bessie Smith.

References:

Larson, Mildred, L. 1984. Meaning based Translation. USA: University Press of America.

Leech, G.N. 1979, Semantics. Auxland: Pengin Books.

Palmer, I.R. 1981, Semantics, Cambridge University Press.

Tarigan, Guntur Henry. Prof. Dr. 1993. Pengajaran Semantik. Penerbit Angkasa Bandung.