What is the meaning of the word meaning is defined as

1. The object of semasiology.
   Two approaches to the study of meaning.

2. Types of meaning.

3. Meaning and motivation.

3.1.
The branch of lexicology which studies meaning is called
«semasiology«.
Sometimes the term «semantics»
is used as a synonym to semasiology, but it is ambiguous as it can
stand as well for (1)
the expressive aspect of language in general and (2)
the meaning of one particular word.

Meaning
is certainly the most important property of the word but what is
«meaning»?

Meaning
is one of the most controversial terms in lexicology. At present
there is no generally accepted definition of meaning. Prof.
Smirnitsky defines meaning as «a certain reflection in the mind
of objects, phenomena or relations that makes part of the linguistic
sign, its so-called inner facet, whereas the sound form functions as
its outer facet». Generally speaking, meaning can be described
as a component of the word through which a concept is communicated,
enabling the word to denote objects in the real world.

There are
two
approaches
to the study of meaning: the
referential approach
and the
functional approach.
The former tries to define meaning in terms of relations between the
word (sound form), concept (notion, thought) and referent (object
which the word denotes). They are closely connected and the
relationship between them is represented by «the semiotic
triangle» ( = the basic triangle) of Ogden and Richards (in the
book «The Meaning of Meaning» (1923) by O.K. Ogden and I.A.
Richards).

concept

symbol
referent

(sound form)

This view denies a direct link
between words and things, arguing that the relationship can be made
only through the use of our minds. Meaning is related to a sound
form, concept and referent but not identical with them: meaning is a
linguistic phenomenon while neither concept nor referent is.

The
main criticism of this approach is the difficulty of identifying
«concepts»: they are mental phenomena and purely
subjective, existing
in the minds of individuals. The strongest point of this approach is
that it connects meaning and the process of nomination.

The functional approach to
meaning is less concerned with what meaning is than with how it
works. It is argued, to say that «words have meanings»
means only that they are used in a certain way in a sentence. There
is no meaning beyond that. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), in
particular, stressed the importance of this approach in his dictum:
«The meaning of the word is its use in the language». So
meaning is studied by making detailed analyses of the way words are
used in contexts, through their relations to other words in speech,
and not through their relations to concepts or referents.

Actually,
the functional approach is basically confined to the analysis of
sameness or difference of meaning. For example, we can say that in
«take
the bottle»
and «take
to the
bottle»
take
has different meaning as it is used differently, but it does not
explain what the meaning of the verb is. So the functional approach
should
be used not as the theoretical basis for the study of meaning, but
only as complementary to the referential approach.

3.2.
Word meaning is made up of different components, commonly known
as types
of meaning.
The two main types of meaning are grammatical
meaning and
lexical meaning.

Grammatical
meaning
belongs to sets of word-forms and is common to
all words of the given part of speech,

e.g.
girls,
boys, classes, children, mice
express the meaning of
«plurality».

Lexical
meaning
belongs to an individual word in all its forms. It
comprises several components. The two main ones are the
denotational
component and
the connotational component.

The
denotational (
=
denotative)
component,
also called «referential
meaning» or «cognitive meaning», expresses the
conceptual (notional)
content of a word; broadly, it is some information, or knowledge,
of the real-world object that the word denotes.
Basically, this is the component that makes communication possible.

e.g.
notorious
«widely-known»,
celebrated «known
widely».

The
connotational (connotative) component
expresses the attitude of
the speaker to what he is saying, to the object denoted by the word.
This component consists of emotive
connotation and
evaluative connotation.

1) Emotive
connotation
( = «affective meaning», or an emotive charge),

e.g.
In «a
single tree»
single states that there is only one tree,
but
«a
lonely tree»
besides giving the same information, also renders
(conveys) the feeling of sadness.

We
shouldn’t confuse emotive connotations and emotive denotative
meanings
in which some emotion is named, e.g. horror,
love, fear, etc.

2) Evaluative
connotation
labels
the referent as «good» or «bad»,

e.g.
notorious
has a negative evaluative connotation, while
celebrated
a positive one. Cf.: a
notorious criminal/liar/ coward,
etc.
and a
celebrated singer/ scholar/ artist, etc.

It
should be noted that emotive and evaluative connotations are not
individual, they are common to all speakers of the language. But
emotive implications are individual (or common to a group of
speakers),
subjective, depend on personal experience.

e.g.
The word «hospital»
may evoke all kinds of emotions in
different
people (an
architect, a doctor, an invalid, etc.)

Stylistic
connotation,
or stylistic reference, another component of word meaning, stands
somewhat apart from emotive and evaluative connotations. Indeed, it
does not characterize a referent, but rather states how a word should
be used by referring it to a certain functional style of the language
peculiar to a specific sphere of communication. It shows in what
social context, in what communicative situations the word can be
used.

Stylistically,
words can be roughly classified into literary,
or formal
(e.g.
commence, discharge, parent),
neutral
(e.g.
father, begin, dismiss)
and non-literary,
or informal
(e.g.
dad, sack, set off).

3.3.
The term «motivation»
is used to denote the relationship between the
form of the word, i.e. its sound form, morphemic composition and
structural pattern, and its meaning.

There
are three
main types of motivation:
phonetic,
morphological
and
semantic.

1)
Phonetic
motivation
is a direct connection between the sound form
of a word and its meaning. There are two types of phonetic
motivation: sound
imitation and
sound symbolism.

a) Sound
imitation, or
onomatopoeia:
phonetically motivated words are
a direct imitation of the sounds they denote (or the sounds produced
by actions or objects they denote),

e.g.
buzz,
swish, bang, thud, cuckoo.

b) Sound
symbolism.
It’s argued by some linguists that the sounds that make up a word may
reflect or symbolise the properties of the object which the word
refers
to, i.e. they may suggest size, shape, speed, colour, etc.

e.g.
back
vowels
suggest big size, heavy weight, dark colour, front
vowels
suggest lightness, smallness, etc.

Many
words beginning with sl-
are slippery in some way: slide,
slip, slither, sludge,
etc.
or pejorative: slut,
slattern, sly, sloppy, slovenly;
words that end in -ump
almost
all refer to some kind of roundish mass: plump,
chump,
rump, hump, stump.

Certainly, not every word with
these phonetic characteristics will have the meaning suggested. This
is, perhaps, one of the reasons why sound symbolism is not
universally recognized in linguistics.

2) Morphological
motivation
is
a direct connection between the lexical meaning of the component
morphemes, the pattern of their arrangement and the meaning of the
word.

Morphologically motivated
words are those whose meaning is determined by the meaning of their
components,

e.g.
re-write
«write
again»,
ex-wife «former
wife».

The degree
of morphological motivation may be different. Words may be
fully
motivated
(then they are transparent), partially
motivated
and
non-motivated
(idiomatic, or opaque).

a)
If the meaning of the word is determined by the meaning of the
components
and the structural pattern, it is fully
motivated:
e.g. hatless.

b)
If the connection between the morphemic composition of a word and
its meaning is arbitrary, the word is non-motivated,
e.g. buttercup
«yellow-flowered plant».

c)
In hammer
-er
shows that it is an instrument, but what is «hamming«?
«Ham»
has no lexical meaning in this word, thus the word is partially
motivated.
Cf. also cranberry.

Motivation may be lost in the
course of time,

e.g.
in OE wīfman
was
motivated morphologically: wīf
+ man «wife
of a man»; now it is opaque;
its motivation is said to be faded (woman).

3) Semantic
motivation
is based on co-existence of direct and figurative
meanings of the same word,

e.g.
butterfly
–
1) insect; 2) showy and
frivolous person.( = metaphorical extension of the direct meaning).

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Chapter 7 what is «meaning»?

Language is the amber in which

a thousand precious and subtle

thoughts have been safely

embedded and preserved

(From Word and Phrase by J. Fitzgerald)

The question posed by the title of this chapter is one of those questions which are easier to ask than answer The linguistic science at present is not able to put forward a definition of meaning which is conclusive.

However, there are certain facts of which we can be reasonably sure, and one of them is that the very function of the word as a unit of communication is made possible by its possessing a meaning. Therefore, among the word’s various characteristics, meaning is certainly the most important.

Generally speaking, meaning can be more or less described as a component of the word through which a concept is communicated, in this way endowing the word with the ability of denoting real objects, qualities actions and abstract notions. The complex and somewhat mysterious relationships between referent (object, etc. denoted by the word), concept and word are traditionally represented by the following triangle [35]:

By the «symbol» here is meant the word; thought or reference is concept. The dotted line suggests that there is no immediate relation between word and referent: it is established only through the concept.

On the other hand, there is a hypothesis that concepts can only find their realization through words. It seems that thought is dormant till the word wakens it up. It is only when we hear a spoken word or read a printed word that the corresponding concept springs into mind.

The mechanism by which concepts (i. e. mental phenomena) are converted into words (i. e. linguistic phenomena) and the reverse process by which a heard or a printed word is converted into a kind of mental picture are not yet understood or described. Probably that is the reason why the process of communication through words, if one gives it some thought, seems nothing short of a miracle. Isn’t it fantastic that the mere vibrations of a speaker’s vocal chords should be taken up by a listener’s brain and converted into vivid pictures? If magic does exist in the world, then it is truly the magic of human speech; only we are so used to this miracle that we do not realize its almost supernatural qualities.

The branch of linguistics which specializes in the study of meaning is called semantics. As with many terms, the term «semantics» is ambiguous for it can stand, as well, for the expressive aspect of language in general and for the meaning of one particular word in all its varied aspects and nuances (i. e. the semantics of a word = the meaning(s) of a word).

As Marip Pei puts it in The Study of Language, «Semantics is ‘language’ in its broadest, most inclusive aspect. Sounds, words, grammatical forms, syntactical constructions are the tools of language. Semantics is language’s avowed purpose.» [39]

The meanings of all the utterances of a speech community are said by another leading linguist to include the total experience of that community; arts, science, practical occupations, amusements, personal and family life.

The modern approach to semantics is based on the assumption that the inner form of the word (i. e. its meaning) presents a structure which is called the semantic structure of the word.

Yet, before going deeper into this problem, it is necessary to make a brief survey of another semantic phenomenon which is closely connected with it.

Polysemy. Semantic Structure of the Word

The semantic structure of the word does not present an indissoluble unity (that is, actually, why it is referred to as «structure»), nor does it necessarily stand for one concept. It is generally known that most words convey several concepts and thus possess the corresponding number of meanings. A word having several meanings is called polysemantic, and the ability of words to have more than one meaning is described by the term polysemy.

Two somewhat naive but frequently asked questions may arise in connection with polysemy:

1. Is polysemy an anomaly or a general rule in English vocabulary?

2. Is polysemy an advantage or a disadvantage so far as the process of communication is concerned? Let us deal with both these questions together. Polysemy is certainly not an anomaly. Most English words are polysemantic. It should be noted that the wealth of expressive resources of a language largely depends on the degree to which polysemy has developed in the language. Sometimes people who are not very well informed in linguistic matters claim that a language is lacking in words if the need arises for the same word to be applied to several different phenomena. In actual fact, it is exactly the opposite: if each word is found to be capable of conveying, let us say, at least two concepts instead of one, the expressive potential of the whole vocabulary increases twofold. Hence, a well-developed polysemy is not a drawback but a great advantage in a language.

On the other hand, it should be pointed out that the number of sound combinations that human speech organs can produce is limited. Therefore at a certain stage of language development the production of new words by morphological means becomes limited, and polysemy becomes increasingly important in providing the means for enriching the vocabulary. From this, it should be clear that the process of enriching the vocabulary does not consist merely in adding new words to it, but, also, in the constant development of polysemy.

The system of meanings of any polysemantic word develops gradually, mostly over the centuries, as more and more new meanings are either added to old ones, or oust some of them (see Ch. 8). So the complicated processes of polysemy development involve both the appearance of new meanings and the loss of old ones. Yet, the general tendency with English vocabulary at the modern stage of its history is to increase the total number of its meanings and in this way to provide for a quantitative and qualitative growth of the language’s expressive resources.

When analysing the semantic structure of a polysemantic word, it is necessary to distinguish between two levels of analysis.

On the first level, the semantic structure of a word is treated as a system of meanings. For example, the semantic structure of the noun fire could be roughly presented by this scheme (only the most frequent meanings are given):

The above scheme suggests that meaning I holds a kind of dominance over the other meanings conveying the concept in the most general way whereas meanings П—V are associated with special circumstances, aspects and instances of the same phenomenon.

Meaning I (generally referred to as the main meaning) presents the centre of the semantic structure of the word holding it together. It is mainly through meaning I that meanings II—V (they are called secondary meanings) can be associated with one another, some of them exclusively through meaning I, as, for instance, meanings IV and V.

It would hardly be possible to establish any logical associations between some of the meanings of the noun bar except through the main meaning:1

Bar, n

II III

 

I

	Any kind of barrier to prevent people from passing.

 

Meanings II and III have no logical links with one another whereas each separately is easily associated with meaning I: meaning II through the traditional barrier dividing a court-room into two parts; meaning III through the counter serving as a kind of barrier between the customers of a pub and the barman.

Yet, it is not in every polysemantic word that such a centre can be found. Some semantic structures are arranged on a different principle. In the following list of meanings of the adjective dull one can hardly hope to find a generalized meaning covering and holding together the rest of the semantic structure.

Dull, adj.

I. Uninteresting, monotonous, boring; e. g. a dull book, a dull film.

II. Slow in understanding, stupid; e. g. a dull student.

III. Not clear or bright; e. g. dull weather, a dull day, a dull colour.

IV. Not loud or distinct; e. g. a dull sound.

V. Not sharp; e. g. a dull knife.

VI. Not active; e. g. Trade is dull.

VII. Seeing badly; e. g. dull eyes (arch.). VIII. Hearing badly; e. g. dull ears (arch.).

Yet, one distinctly feels that there is something that all these seemingly miscellaneous meanings have in common, and that is the implication of deficiency, be it of colour (m. Ill), wits (m. II), interest (m. I), sharpness (m. V), etc. The implication of insufficient quality, of something lacking, can be clearly distinguished in each separate meaning.

In fact, each meaning definition in the given scheme can be subjected to a transformational operation to prove the point.

Dull, adj.

I. Uninteresting ——> deficient in interest or excitement.

II. … Stupid ——> deficient in intellect.

III. Not bright ——> deficient in light or colour.

IV. Not loud ——> deficient in sound.

V. Not sharp ——> deficient in sharpness.

VI. Not active ——> deficient in activity.

VII. Seeing badly ——> deficient in eyesight.

VIII. Hearing badly ——> deficient in hearing.

The transformed scheme of the semantic structure of dull clearly shows that the centre holding together the complex semantic structure of this word is not one of the meanings but a certain component that can be easily singled out within each separate meaning.

This brings us to the second level of analysis of the semantic structure of a word. The transformational operation with the meaning definitions of dull reveals something very significant: the semantic structure of the word is «divisible», as it were, not only at the level of different meanings but, also, at a deeper level.

Each separate meaning seems to be subject to structural analysis in which it may be represented as sets of semantic components. In terms of componential analysis, one of the modern methods of semantic research, the meaning of a word is defined as a set of elements of meaning which are not part of the vocabulary of the language itself, but rather theoretical elements, postulated in order to describe the semantic relations between the lexical elements of a given language.

The scheme of the semantic structure of dull shows that the semantic structure of a word is not a mere system of meanings, for each separate meaning is subject to further subdivision and possesses an inner structure of its own.

Therefore, the semantic structure of a word should be investigated at both these levels: a) of different meanings, b) of semantic components within each separate meaning. For a monosemantic word (i. e. a word with one meaning) the first level is naturally excluded.

Types of Semantic Components

The leading semantic component in the semantic structure of a word is usually termed denotative component (also, the term referential component may be used). The denotative component expresses the conceptual content of a word.

The following list presents denotative components of some English adjectives and verbs:

Denotative components

lonely, adj. ——> alone, without company ……………

notorious, adj. ——> widely known ……………

celebrated, adj. ——> widely known ……………

to glare, v. ——> to look ……………

to glance, v. ——> to look ……………

to shiver, v. ——> to tremble ……………

to shudder, v. ——> to tremble ……………

It is quite obvious that the definitions given in the right column only partially and incompletely describe the meanings of their corresponding words. To give a more or less full picture of the meaning of a word, it is necessary to include in the scheme of analysis additional semantic components which are termed connotations or connotative components.

Let us complete the semantic structures of the words given above introducing connotative components into the schemes of their semantic structures.

The above examples show how by singling out denotative and connotative components one can get a sufficiently clear picture of what the word really means. The schemes presenting the semantic structures of glare, shiver, shudder also show that a meaning can have two or more connotative components.

The given examples do not exhaust all the types of connotations but present only a few: emotive, evaluative connotations, and also connotations of duration and of cause. (For a more detailed classification of connotative components of a meaning, see Ch. 10.)

Meaning and Context

In the beginning of the paragraph entitled «Polysemy» we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of this linguistic phenomenon. One of the most important «drawbacks» of polysemantic words is that there is sometimes a chance of misunderstanding when a word is used in a certain meaning but accepted by a listener or reader in another. It is only natural that such cases provide stuff of which jokes are made, such as the ones that follow:

Customer. I would like a book, please.

Bookseller. Something light?

Customer. That doesn’t matter. I have my car with me.

In this conversation the customer is honestly misled by the polysemy of the adjective light taking it in the literal sense whereas the bookseller uses the word in its figurative meaning «not serious; entertaining».

In the following joke one of the speakers pretends to misunderstand his interlocutor basing his angry retort on the polysemy of the noun kick:

The critic started to leave in the middle of the second act of the play.

«Don’t go,» said the manager. «I promise there’s a terrific kick in the next act.»

«Fine,» was the retort, «give it to the author.»1

Generally speaking, it is common knowledge that context is a powerful preventative against any misunderstanding of meanings. For instance, the adjective dull, if used out of context, would mean different things to different people or nothing at all. It is only in combination with other words that it reveals its actual meaning: a dull pupil, a dull play, a dull razor-blade, dull weather, etc. Sometimes, however, such a minimum context fails to reveal the meaning of the word, and it may be correctly interpreted only through what Professor N. Amosova termed a second-degree context [1], as in the following example: The man was large, but his wife was even fatter. The word fatter here serves as a kind of indicator pointing that large describes a stout man and not a big one.

Current research in semantics is largely based on the assumption that one of the more promising methods of investigating the semantic structure of a word is by studying the word’s linear relationships with other words in typical contexts, i. e. its combinability or collocability.

Scholars have established that the semantics of words characterized by common occurrences (i. e. words which regularly appear in common contexts) are correlated and, therefore, one of the words within such a pair can be studied through the other.

Thus, if one intends to investigate the semantic structure of an adjective, one would best consider the adjective in its most typical syntactical patterns A + N (adjective + noun) and N + l + A (noun + link verb + adjective) and make a thorough study of the meanings of nouns with which the adjective is frequently used.

For instance, a study of typical contexts of the adjective bright in the first pattern will give us the following sets: a) bright colour (flower, dress, silk, etc.), b) bright metal (gold, jewels, armour, etc.), c) bright student (pupil, boy, fellow, etc.), d) bright face (smile, eyes, etc.) and some others. These sets will lead us to singling out the meanings of the adjective related to each set of combinations: a) intensive in colour, b) shining, c) capable, d) gay, etc.

For a transitive verb, on the other hand, the recommended pattern would be V + N (verb + direct object expressed by a noun). If, for instance, our object of investigation are the verbs to produce, to create, to compose, the correct procedure would be to consider the semantics of the nouns that are used in the pattern with each of these verbs: what is it that is produced? created? composed?

There is an interesting hypothesis that the semantics of words regularly used in common contexts (e. g. bright colours, to build a house, to create a work of art, etc.) are so intimately correlated that each of them casts, as it were, a kind of permanent reflection on the meaning of its neighbour. If the verb to compose is frequently used with the object music, isn’t it natural to expect that certain musical associations linger in the meaning of the verb to compose?

Note, also, how closely the negative evaluative connotation of the adjective notorious is linked with the negative connotation of the nouns with which it is regularly associated: a notorious criminal, thief, gangster, gambler, gossip, liar, miser, etc.

All this leads us to the conclusion that context is a good and reliable key to the meaning of the word. Yet, even the jokes given above show how misleading this key can prove in some cases. And here we are faced with two dangers. The first is that of sheer misunderstanding, when the speaker means one thing and the listener takes the word in its other meaning.

The second danger has nothing to do with the process of communication but with research work in the field of semantics. A common error with the inexperienced research worker is to see a different meaning in every new set of combinations. Here is a puzzling question to illustrate what we mean. Cf.: an angry man, an angry letter. Is the adjective angry used in the same meaning in both these contexts or in two different meanings? Some people will say «two» and argue that, on the one hand, the combinability is different (man — name of person; letter — name of object) and, on the other hand, a letter cannot experience anger. True, it cannot; but it can very well convey the anger of the person who wrote it. As to the combinability, the main point is that a word can realize the same meaning in different sets of combinability. For instance, in the pairs merry children, merry laughter, merry faces, merry songs the adjective merry conveys the same concept of high spirits whether they are directly experienced by the children (in the first phrase) or indirectly expressed through the merry faces, the laughter and the songs of the other word groups.

The task of distinguishing between the different meanings of a word and the different variations of combinability (or, in a traditional terminology, different usages of the word) is actually a question of singling out the different denotations within the semantic structure of the word.

Cf.: 1) a sad woman,

2) a sad voice,

3) a sac? story,

4) a sad scoundrel (= an incorrigible scoundrel)

5) a sad night (= a dark, black night, arch. poet.)

How many meanings of sad can you identify in these contexts? Obviously the first three contexts have the common denotation of sorrow whereas in the fourth and fifth contexts the denotations are different. So, in these five contexts we can identify three meanings of sad.

All this leads us to the conclusion that context is not the ultimate criterion for meaning and it should be used in combination with other criteria. Nowadays, different methods of componential analysis are widely used in semantic research: definitional analysis, transformational analysis, distributional analysis. Yet, contextual analysis remains one of the main investigative methods for determining the semantic structure of a word.

Exercises

I. Consider your answers to the following.

1. What is understood by «semantics»? Explain the term «polysemy».

2. Define polysemy as a linguistic phenomenon. Illustrate your answer with your own examples.

3. What are the two levels of analysis in investigating the semantic structure of a word?

4. What types of semantic components can be distinguished within the meaning of a word?

5. What is one of the most promising methods for investigating the semantic structure of a word? What is understood by collocability (combinability)?

6. How can one distinguish between the different meanings of a word and the different variations of combinability?

II. Define the meanings of the words in the following sentences. Say how the meanings of the same word are associated one with another.

1.I walked into Hyde Park, fell flat upon the grass and almost immediately fell asleep. 2. a) ‘Hello’, I said, and thrust my hand through the bars, whereon the dog became silent and licked me prodigiously, b) At the end of the long bar, leaning against the counter was a slim pale individual wearing a red bow-tie. 3. a) I began to search the flat, looking in drawers and boxes to see if I could find a key. b) I tumbled with a sort of splash upon the keys of a ghostly piano, c) Now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key higher, d) Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the expression ‘madman’ as he bent over Welson’s body that afternoon, and the authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper report next morning. 4. a) Her mouth opened crookedly half an inch, and she shot a few words at one like pebbles. b) Would you like me to come to the mouth of the river with you? 5. a) I sat down for a few minutes with my head in ray hands, until I heard the phone taken up inside and the butler’s voice calling a taxi. b) The minute hand of the electric clock jumped on to figure twelve, and, simultaneously, the steeple of St. Mary’s whose vicar always kept his clock by the wireless began its feeble imitation of Big Ben. 6. a) My head felt as if it were on a string and someone were trying to pull it off. b) G. Quartermain, board chairman and chief executive of Supernational Corporation was a bull of a man who possessed more power than many heads of the state and exercised it like a king.

III. Copy out the following pairs of words grouping together the ones which represent the same meaning of each word. Explain the different meanings and the different usages, giving reasons for your answer. Use dictionaries if necessary.

smart, adj.

smart clothes, a smart answer, a smart house, a smart garden, a smart repartee, a smart officer, a smart blow, a smart punishment

stubborn, adj.

a stubborn child, a stubborn look, a stubborn horse, stubborn resistance, a stubborn fighting, a stubborn cough, stubborn depression

sound, adj.

sound lungs, a sound scholar, a sound tennis-player, sound views, sound advice, sound criticism, a sound ship, a sound whipping

roof, n.

edible roots, the root of the tooth, the root of the matter, the root of all evil, square root, cube root

perform, v.

to perform one’s duty, to perform an operation, to perform a dance, to perform a play

kick, v.

to kick the ball, to kick the dog, to kick off one’s slippers, to kick smb. downstairs

IV. The verb «to take» is highly polysemantic in Modern English. On which meanings of the verb are the following jokes based? Give your own examples to illustrate the other meanings of the word.

1. «Where have you been for the last four years?» «At college taking medicine.» «And did you finally get well?»

2. «Doctor, what should a woman take when she is run down?»

«The license number, madame, the license number.»

3.Proctor (exceedingly angry): So you confess that this unfortunate Freshman was carried to this frog pond and drenched. Now what part did you take in this disgraceful affair?

Sophomore (meekly): The right leg, sir.

V. Explain the basis for the following jokes. Use the dictionary when in doubt.

1. Caller: I wonder if I can see your mother, little boy. Is she engaged9

Willie: Engaged! She’s married.

2. Booking Clerk (at a small village station):

You’ll have to change twice before you get to York.

Villager (unused to travelling): Goodness me! And I’ve only brought the clothes I’m wearing.

3. The weather forecaster hadn’t been right in three months, and his resignation caused little surprise. His alibi, however, pleased the city council.

«I can’t stand this town any longer,» read his note. «The climate doesn’t agree with me.»

4.Professor: You missed my class yesterday, didn’t you?

Unsubdued student: Not in the least, sir, not in the least.

5. «Papa, what kind of a robber is a page?» «A what?»

«It says here that two pages held up the bride’s train.»

VI. Choose any polysemantic word that is well-known to you and illustrate its meanings with examples of your own. Prove that the meanings are related one to another.

VII. Read the following jokes. Analyse the collocability of the italicized words and state its relationship with the meaning.

1. Ladу (at party): Where is that pretty maid who was passing our cocktails a while ago?

Hostess: Oh, you are looking for a drink?

Lady: No, I’m looking for my husband.

2. Peggy: I want to help you, Dad. I shall get the dress-maker to teach me to cut out gowns.

Dad: I don’t want you to go that far. Peg, but you might cut out cigarettes, and taxi bills.

3. There are cynics who claim that movies would be better if they shot less films and more actors.

4. Killy: Is your wound sore, Mr. Pup?

Mr. Pup: Wound? What wound?

Kitty: Why, sister said she cut you at the dinner last night.

VIII. Try your hand at being a lexicographer. Write simple definitions to illustrate as many meanings as possible for the following polysemantic words. After you have done it, check your results using a dictionary.

Face, heart, nose, smart, to lose.

IX. Try your hand at the following research work.

a. Illustrate the semantic structure of one of the following words with a diagram; use the dictionary if necessary.

Foot, п.; hand, п.; ring, п.; stream, n.; warm, adj.; green, adj.; sail, n.; key, n.; glass, п.; eye, n.

b. Identify the denotative and connotative elements of the meanings in the following pairs of words.

To conceal — to disguise, to choose — to select, to draw — to paint, money — cash, photograph — picture, odd — queer.

c. Read the entries for the English word «court» and the Russian «суд» in an English-Russian and Russian-English dictionary. Explain the differences in the semantic structure of both words.

In semantics and pragmatics, meaning is the message conveyed by words, sentences, and symbols in a context. Also called lexical meaning or semantic meaning.

In The Evolution of Language (2010), W. Tecumseh Fitch points out that semantics is «the branch of language study that consistently rubs shoulders with philosophy. This is because the study of meaning raises a host of deep problems that are the traditional stomping grounds for philosophers.»

Here are more examples of meaning from other writers on the subject:

Word Meanings

«Word meanings are like stretchy pullovers, whose outline contour is visible, but whose detailed shape varies with use: ‘The proper meaning of a word . . . is never something upon which the word sits like a gull on a stone; it is something over which the word hovers like a gull over a ship’s stern,’ noted one literary critic [Robin George Collingwood].»
(Jean Aitchison, The Language Web: The Power and Problem of Words. Cambridge University Press, 1997)

Meaning in Sentences

«It may justly be urged that, properly speaking, what alone has meaning is a sentence. Of course, we can speak quite properly of, for example, ‘looking up the meaning of a word’ in a dictionary. Nevertheless, it appears that the sense in which a word or phrase ‘has a meaning’ is derivative from the sense in which a sentence ‘has a meaning’: to say a word or phrase ‘has a meaning’ is to say that there are sentences in which it occurs which ‘have meanings’; and to know the meaning which the word or phrase has, is to know the meanings of sentences in which it occurs. All the dictionary can do when we ‘look up the meaning of a word’ is to suggest aids to the understanding of sentences in which it occurs. Hence it appears correct to say that what ‘has meaning’ in the primary sense is the sentence.» (John L. Austin, «The Meaning of a Word.» Philosophical Papers, 3rd ed., edited by J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. Oxford University Press, 1990)

Different Kinds of Meaning for Different Kinds of Words

«There can’t be a single answer to the question ‘Are meanings in the world or in the head?’ because the division of labor between sense and reference is very different for different kinds of words. With a word like this or that, the sense by itself is useless in picking out the referent; it all depends on what is in the environs at the time and place that a person utters it. . . . Linguists call them deictic terms . . .. Other examples are here, there, you, me, now, and then. «At the other extreme are words that refer to whatever we say they mean when we stipulate their meanings in a system of rules. At least in theory, you don’t have to go out into the world with your eyes peeled to know what a touchdown is, or a member of parliament, or a dollar, or an American citizen, or GO in Monopoly, because their meaning is laid down exactly by the rules and regulations of a game or system. These are sometimes called nominal kinds—kinds of things that are picked out only by how we decide to name them.» (Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought. Viking, 2007)

Two Types of Meaning: Semantic and Pragmatic

«It has been generally assumed that we have to understand two types of meaning to understand what the speaker means by uttering a sentence. . . . A sentence expresses a more or less complete propositional content, which is semantic meaning, and extra pragmatic meaning comes from a particular context in which the sentence is uttered.» (Etsuko Oishi, «Semantic Meaning and Four Types of Speech Act.» Perspectives on Dialogue in the New Millennium, ed. P. Kühnlein et al. John Benjamins, 2003)

Pronunciation: ME-ning

Etymology

From the Old English, «to tell of»

In semantics, semiotics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and metasemantics, meaning «is a relationship between two sorts of things: signs and the kinds of things they intend, express, or signify».^[1]

The types of meanings vary according to the types of the thing that is being represented. Namely:

• There are the things, which might have meaning;
• There are things that are also signs of other things, and so, are always meaningful (i.e., natural signs of the physical world and ideas within the mind);
• There are things that are necessarily meaningful such as words and nonverbal symbols.

The major contemporary positions of meaning come under the following partial definitions of meaning:

• Psychological theories, involving notions of thought, intention, or understanding;
• Logical theories, involving notions such as intension, cognitive content, or sense, along with extension, reference, or denotation;
• Message, content, information, or communication;
• Truth conditions;
• Usage, and the instructions for usage; and
• Measurement, computation, or operation.

Truth and meaning[edit]

The question of what is a proper basis for deciding how words, symbols, ideas and beliefs may properly be considered to truthfully denote meaning, whether by a single person or by an entire society, has been considered by five major types of theory of meaning and truth.^[2][3][4] Each type is discussed below, together with its principal exponents.^[2][5][6]

Substantive theories of meaning[edit]

Correspondence theory[edit]

Correspondence theories emphasise that true beliefs and true statements of meaning correspond to the actual state of affairs and that associated meanings must be in agreement with these beliefs and statements.^[7] This type of theory stresses a relationship between thoughts or statements on one hand, and things or objects on the other. It is a traditional model tracing its origins to ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.^[8] This class of theories holds that the truth or the falsity of a representation is determined in principle entirely by how it relates to «things», by whether it accurately describes those «things». An example of correspondence theory is the statement by the thirteenth-century philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas: Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus («Truth is the equation [or adequation] of things and intellect»), a statement which Aquinas attributed to the ninth-century neoplatonist Isaac Israeli.^[9][10][11] Aquinas also restated the theory as: «A judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality».^[12]

Correspondence theory centres heavily around the assumption that truth and meaning are a matter of accurately copying what is known as «objective reality» and then representing it in thoughts, words and other symbols.^[13] Many modern theorists have stated that this ideal cannot be achieved without analysing additional factors.^[2][14] For example, language plays a role in that all languages have words to represent concepts that are virtually undefined in other languages. The German word Zeitgeist is one such example: one who speaks or understands the language may «know» what it means, but any translation of the word apparently fails to accurately capture its full meaning (this is a problem with many abstract words, especially those derived in agglutinative languages). Thus, some words add an additional parameter to the construction of an accurate truth predicate. Among the philosophers who grappled with this problem is Alfred Tarski, whose semantic theory is summarized further below in this article.^[15]

Coherence theory[edit]

For coherence theories in general, the assessment of meaning and truth requires a proper fit of elements within a whole system. Very often, though, coherence is taken to imply something more than simple logical consistency; often there is a demand that the propositions in a coherent system lend mutual inferential support to each other. So, for example, the completeness and comprehensiveness of the underlying set of concepts is a critical factor in judging the validity and usefulness of a coherent system.^[16] A pervasive tenet of coherence theories is the idea that truth is primarily a property of whole systems of propositions, and can be ascribed to individual propositions only according to their coherence with the whole. Among the assortment of perspectives commonly regarded as coherence theory, theorists differ on the question of whether coherence entails many possible true systems of thought or only a single absolute system.

Some variants of coherence theory are claimed to describe the essential and intrinsic properties of formal systems in logic and mathematics.^[17] However, formal reasoners are content to contemplate axiomatically independent and sometimes mutually contradictory systems side by side, for example, the various alternative geometries. On the whole, coherence theories have been rejected for lacking justification in their application to other areas of truth, especially with respect to assertions about the natural world, empirical data in general, assertions about practical matters of psychology and society, especially when used without support from the other major theories of truth.^[18]

Coherence theories distinguish the thought of rationalist philosophers, particularly of Spinoza, Leibniz, and G.W.F. Hegel, along with the British philosopher F.H. Bradley.^[19] Other alternatives may be found among several proponents of logical positivism, notably Otto Neurath and Carl Hempel.

Constructivist theory[edit]

Social constructivism holds that meaning and truth are constructed by social processes, are historically and culturally specific, and are in part shaped through power struggles within a community. Constructivism views all of our knowledge as «constructed», because it does not reflect any external «transcendent» realities (as a pure correspondence theory might hold). Rather, perceptions of truth are viewed as contingent on convention, human perception, and social experience. It is believed by constructivists that representations of physical and biological reality, including race, sexuality, and gender, are socially constructed.

Giambattista Vico was among the first to claim that history and culture, along with their meaning, are human products. Vico’s epistemological orientation gathers the most diverse rays and unfolds in one axiom – verum ipsum factum – «truth itself is constructed». Hegel and Marx were among the other early proponents of the premise that truth is, or can be, socially constructed. Marx, like many critical theorists who followed, did not reject the existence of objective truth but rather distinguished between true knowledge and knowledge that has been distorted through power or ideology. For Marx, scientific and true knowledge is «in accordance with the dialectical understanding of history» and ideological knowledge is «an epiphenomenal expression of the relation of material forces in a given economic arrangement».^[20]

Consensus theory[edit]

Consensus theory holds that meaning and truth are whatever is agreed upon—or, in some versions, might come to be agreed upon—by some specified group. Such a group might include all human beings, or a subset thereof consisting of more than one person.

Among the current advocates of consensus theory as a useful accounting of the concept of «truth» is the philosopher Jürgen Habermas.^[21] Habermas maintains that truth is what would be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation.^[22] Among the current strong critics of consensus theory is the philosopher Nicholas Rescher.^[23]

Pragmatic theory[edit]

The three most influential forms of the pragmatic theory of truth and meaning were introduced around the turn of the 20th century by Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Although there are wide differences in viewpoint among these and other proponents of pragmatic theory, they hold in common that meaning and truth are verified and confirmed by the results of putting one’s concepts into practice.^[24]

Peirce defines truth as follows: «Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth.»^[25] This statement stresses Peirce’s view that ideas of approximation, incompleteness, and partiality, what he describes elsewhere as fallibilism and «reference to the future», are essential to a proper conception of meaning and truth. Although Peirce uses words like concordance and correspondence to describe one aspect of the pragmatic sign relation, he is also quite explicit in saying that definitions of truth based on mere correspondence are no more than nominal definitions, which he accords a lower status than real definitions.

William James’s version of pragmatic theory, while complex, is often summarized by his statement that «the ‘true’ is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the ‘right’ is only the expedient in our way of behaving».^[26] By this, James meant that truth is a quality, the value of which is confirmed by its effectiveness when applying concepts to practice (thus, «pragmatic»).

John Dewey, less broadly than James but more broadly than Peirce, held that inquiry, whether scientific, technical, sociological, philosophical or cultural, is self-corrective over time if openly submitted for testing by a community of inquirers in order to clarify, justify, refine and/or refute proposed meanings and truths.^[27]

A later variation of the pragmatic theory was William Ernest Hocking’s «negative pragmatism»: what works may or may not be true, but what fails cannot be true, because the truth and its meaning always works.^[28] James’s and Dewey’s ideas also ascribe meaning and truth to repeated testing, which is «self-corrective» over time.

Pragmatism and negative pragmatism are also closely aligned with the coherence theory of truth in that any testing should not be isolated but rather incorporate knowledge from all human endeavors and experience. The universe is a whole and integrated system, and testing should acknowledge and account for its diversity. As physicist Richard Feynman said: «if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong».^[29]

Associated theories and commentaries[edit]

Some have asserted that meaning is nothing substantially more or less than the truth conditions they involve. For such theories, an emphasis is placed upon reference to actual things in the world to account for meaning, with the caveat that reference more or less explains the greater part (or all) of meaning itself.

Logic and language[edit]

The logical positivists argued that the meaning of a statement arose from how it is verified.

Gottlob Frege[edit]

In his paper «Über Sinn und Bedeutung» (now usually translated as «On Sense and Reference»), Gottlob Frege argued that proper names present at least two problems in explaining meaning.

1. Suppose the meaning of a name is the thing it refers to. Sam, then, means a person in the world who is named Sam. But if the object referred to by the name did not exist—i.e., Pegasus—then, according to that theory, it would be meaningless.
2. Suppose two different names refer to the same object. Hesperus and Phosphorus were the names given to what were considered distinct celestial bodies. It was later shown that they were the same thing (the planet Venus). If the words meant the same thing, then substituting one for the other in a sentence would not result in a sentence that differs in meaning from the original. But in that case, «Hesperus is Phosphorus» would mean the same thing as «Hesperus is Hesperus». This is clearly absurd, since we learn something new and unobvious by the former statement, but not by the latter.

Frege can be interpreted as arguing that it was therefore a mistake to think that the meaning of a name is the thing it refers to. Instead, the meaning must be something else—the «sense» of the word. Two names for the same person, then, can have different senses (or meanings): one referent might be picked out by more than one sense. This sort of theory is called a mediated reference theory. Frege argued that, ultimately, the same bifurcation of meaning must apply to most or all linguistic categories, such as to quantificational expressions like «All boats float».

Bertrand Russell[edit]

Logical analysis was further advanced by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead in their groundbreaking Principia Mathematica, which attempted to produce a formal language with which the truth of all mathematical statements could be demonstrated from first principles.

Russell differed from Frege greatly on many points, however. He rejected Frege’s sense-reference distinction. He also disagreed that language was of fundamental significance to philosophy, and saw the project of developing formal logic as a way of eliminating all of the confusions caused by ordinary language, and hence at creating a perfectly transparent medium in which to conduct traditional philosophical argument. He hoped, ultimately, to extend the proofs of the Principia to all possible true statements, a scheme he called logical atomism. For a while it appeared that his pupil Wittgenstein had succeeded in this plan with his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

Russell’s work, and that of his colleague G. E. Moore, developed in response to what they perceived as the nonsense dominating British philosophy departments at the turn of the 20th century, which was a kind of British Idealism most of which was derived (albeit very distantly) from the work of Hegel. In response Moore developed an approach («Common Sense Philosophy»^[30]) which sought to examine philosophical difficulties by a close analysis of the language used in order to determine its meaning. In this way Moore sought to expunge philosophical absurdities such as «time is unreal». Moore’s work would have significant, if oblique, influence (largely mediated by Wittgenstein) on Ordinary language philosophy.

Other truth theories of meaning[edit]

The Vienna Circle, a famous group of logical positivists from the early 20th century (closely allied with Russell and Frege), adopted the verificationist theory of meaning, a type of truth theory of meaning.^[31] The verificationist theory of meaning (in at least one of its forms) states that to say that an expression is meaningful is to say that there are some conditions of experience that could exist to show that the expression is true. As noted, Frege and Russell were two proponents of this way of thinking.

A semantic theory of truth was produced by Alfred Tarski for formal semantics. According to Tarski’s account, meaning consists of a recursive set of rules that end up yielding an infinite set of sentences, «‘p’ is true if and only if p», covering the whole language. His innovation produced the notion of propositional functions discussed on the section on universals (which he called «sentential functions»), and a model-theoretic approach to semantics (as opposed to a proof-theoretic one). Finally, some links were forged to the correspondence theory of truth (Tarski, 1944).

Perhaps the most influential current approach in the contemporary theory of meaning is that sketched by Donald Davidson in his introduction to the collection of essays Truth and Meaning in 1967. There he argued for the following two theses:

• Any learnable language must be statable in a finite form, even if it is capable of a theoretically infinite number of expressions—as we may assume that natural human languages are, at least in principle. If it could not be stated in a finite way then it could not be learned through a finite, empirical method such as the way humans learn their languages. It follows that it must be possible to give a theoretical semantics for any natural language which could give the meanings of an infinite number of sentences on the basis of a finite system of axioms.
• Giving the meaning of a sentence, he further argued, was equivalent to stating its truth conditions. He proposed that it must be possible to account for language as a set of distinct grammatical features together with a lexicon, and for each of them explain its workings in such a way as to generate trivial (obviously correct) statements of the truth conditions of all the (infinitely many) sentences built up from these.

The result is a theory of meaning that rather resembles, by no accident, Tarski’s account.

Davidson’s account, though brief, constitutes the first systematic presentation of truth-conditional semantics. He proposed simply translating natural languages into first-order predicate calculus in order to reduce meaning to a function of truth.

Saul Kripke[edit]

Saul Kripke examined the relation between sense and reference in dealing with possible and actual situations. He showed that one consequence of his interpretation of certain systems of modal logic was that the reference of a proper name is necessarily linked to its referent, but that the sense is not. So for instance «Hesperus» necessarily refers to Hesperus, even in those imaginary cases and worlds in which perhaps Hesperus is not the evening star. That is, Hesperus is necessarily Hesperus, but only contingently the morning star.

This results in the curious situation that part of the meaning of a name — that it refers to some particular thing — is a necessary fact about that name, but another part — that it is used in some particular way or situation — is not.

Kripke also drew the distinction between speaker’s meaning and semantic meaning, elaborating on the work of ordinary language philosophers Paul Grice and Keith Donnellan. The speaker’s meaning is what the speaker intends to refer to by saying something; the semantic meaning is what the words uttered by the speaker mean according to the language.

In some cases, people do not say what they mean; in other cases, they say something that is in error. In both these cases, the speaker’s meaning and the semantic meaning seem to be different. Sometimes words do not actually express what the speaker wants them to express; so words will mean one thing, and what people intend to convey by them might mean another. The meaning of the expression, in such cases, is ambiguous.

Critiques of truth theories of meaning[edit]

W. V. O. Quine attacked both verificationism and the very notion of meaning in his famous essay, «Two Dogmas of Empiricism». In it, he suggested that meaning was nothing more than a vague and dispensable notion. Instead, he asserted, what was more interesting to study was the synonymy between signs. He also pointed out that verificationism was tied to the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, and asserted that such a divide was defended ambiguously. He also suggested that the unit of analysis for any potential investigation into the world (and, perhaps, meaning) would be the entire body of statements taken as a collective, not just individual statements on their own.

Other criticisms can be raised on the basis of the limitations that truth-conditional theorists themselves admit to. Tarski, for instance, recognized that truth-conditional theories of meaning only make sense of statements, but fail to explain the meanings of the lexical parts that make up statements. Rather, the meaning of the parts of statements is presupposed by an understanding of the truth-conditions of a whole statement, and explained in terms of what he called «satisfaction conditions».

Still another objection (noted by Frege and others) was that some kinds of statements don’t seem to have any truth-conditions at all. For instance, «Hello!» has no truth-conditions, because it doesn’t even attempt to tell the listener anything about the state of affairs in the world. In other words, different propositions have different grammatical moods.

Deflationist accounts of truth, sometimes called ‘irrealist’ accounts, are the staunchest source of criticism of truth-conditional theories of meaning. According to them, «truth» is a word with no serious meaning or function in discourse. For instance, for the deflationist, the sentences «It’s true that Tiny Tim is trouble» and «Tiny Tim is trouble» are equivalent. In consequence, for the deflationist, any appeal to truth as an account of meaning has little explanatory power.

The sort of truth theories presented here can also be attacked for their formalism both in practice and principle. The principle of formalism is challenged by the informalists, who suggest that language is largely a construction of the speaker, and so, not compatible with formalization. The practice of formalism is challenged by those who observe that formal languages (such as present-day quantificational logic) fail to capture the expressive power of natural languages (as is arguably demonstrated in the awkward character of the quantificational explanation of definite description statements, as laid out by Bertrand Russell).

Finally, over the past century, forms of logic have been developed that are not dependent exclusively on the notions of truth and falsity. Some of these types of logic have been called modal logics. They explain how certain logical connectives such as «if-then» work in terms of necessity and possibility. Indeed, modal logic was the basis of one of the most popular and rigorous formulations in modern semantics called the Montague grammar. The successes of such systems naturally give rise to the argument that these systems have captured the natural meaning of connectives like if-then far better than an ordinary, truth-functional logic ever could.

Usage and meaning[edit]

Throughout the 20th century, English philosophy focused closely on analysis of language. This style of analytic philosophy became very influential and led to the development of a wide range of philosophical tools.

Ludwig Wittgenstein[edit]

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was originally an ideal language philosopher, following the influence of Russell and Frege. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus he had supported the idea of an ideal language built up from atomic statements using logical connectives (see picture theory of meaning and logical atomism). However, as he matured, he came to appreciate more and more the phenomenon of natural language. Philosophical Investigations, published after his death, signalled a sharp departure from his earlier work with its focus upon ordinary language use (see use theory of meaning and ordinary language philosophy). His approach is often summarised by the aphorism «the meaning of a word is its use in a language». However, following in Frege’s footsteps, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein declares: «… Only in the context of a proposition has a name meaning.»^[32]

His work would come to inspire future generations and spur forward a whole new discipline, which explained meaning in a new way. Meaning in a natural language was seen as primarily a question of how the speaker uses words within the language to express intention.

This close examination of natural language proved to be a powerful philosophical technique. Practitioners who were influenced by Wittgenstein’s approach have included an entire tradition of thinkers, featuring P. F. Strawson, Paul Grice, R. M. Hare, R. S. Peters, and Jürgen Habermas.

J. L. Austin[edit]

At around the same time Ludwig Wittgenstein was re-thinking his approach to language, reflections on the complexity of language led to a more expansive approach to meaning. Following the lead of George Edward Moore, J. L. Austin examined the use of words in great detail. He argued against fixating on the meaning of words. He showed that dictionary definitions are of limited philosophical use, since there is no simple «appendage» to a word that can be called its meaning. Instead, he showed how to focus on the way in which words are used in order to do things. He analysed the structure of utterances into three distinct parts: locutions, illocutions and perlocutions. His pupil John Searle developed the idea under the label «speech acts». Their work greatly influenced pragmatics.

Peter Strawson[edit]

Past philosophers had understood reference to be tied to words themselves. However, Peter Strawson disagreed in his seminal essay, «On Referring», where he argued that there is nothing true about statements on their own; rather, only the uses of statements could be considered to be true or false.

Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the ordinary use perspective is its insistence upon the distinctions between meaning and use. «Meanings», for ordinary language philosophers, are the instructions for usage of words — the common and conventional definitions of words. Usage, on the other hand, is the actual meanings that individual speakers have — the things that an individual speaker in a particular context wants to refer to. The word «dog» is an example of a meaning, but pointing at a nearby dog and shouting «This dog smells foul!» is an example of usage. From this distinction between usage and meaning arose the divide between the fields of pragmatics and semantics.

Yet another distinction is of some utility in discussing language: «mentioning». Mention is when an expression refers to itself as a linguistic item, usually surrounded by quotation marks. For instance, in the expression «‘Opopanax’ is hard to spell», what is referred to is the word itself («opopanax») and not what it means (an obscure gum resin). Frege had referred to instances of mentioning as «opaque contexts».

In his essay, «Reference and Definite Descriptions», Keith Donnellan sought to improve upon Strawson’s distinction. He pointed out that there are two uses of definite descriptions: attributive and referential. Attributive uses provide a description of whoever is being referred to, while referential uses point out the actual referent. Attributive uses are like mediated references, while referential uses are more directly referential.

Paul Grice[edit]

The philosopher Paul Grice, working within the ordinary language tradition, understood «meaning» — in his 1957 article — to have two kinds: natural and non-natural. Natural meaning had to do with cause and effect, for example with the expression «these spots mean measles». Non-natural meaning, on the other hand, had to do with the intentions of the speaker in communicating something to the listener.

In his essay, Logic and Conversation, Grice went on to explain and defend an explanation of how conversations work. His guiding maxim was called the cooperative principle, which claimed that the speaker and the listener will have mutual expectations of the kind of information that will be shared. The principle is broken down into four maxims: Quality (which demands truthfulness and honesty), Quantity (demand for just enough information as is required), Relation (relevance of things brought up), and Manner (lucidity). This principle, if and when followed, lets the speaker and listener figure out the meaning of certain implications by way of inference.

The works of Grice led to an avalanche of research and interest in the field, both supportive and critical. One spinoff was called Relevance theory, developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson during the mid-1980s, whose goal was to make the notion of relevance more clear. Similarly, in his work, «Universal pragmatics», Jürgen Habermas began a program that sought to improve upon the work of the ordinary language tradition. In it, he laid out the goal of a valid conversation as a pursuit of mutual understanding.

Noam Chomsky[edit]

Although he has focused on the structure and functioning of human syntax, in many works^{[33][34][35][36]} Noam Chomsky has discussed many philosophical problems too, including the problem of meaning and reference in human language. Chomsky has formulated a strong criticism against both the externalist notion of reference (reference consists in a direct or causal relation among words and objects) and the internalist one (reference is a mind-mediated relation holding among words and reality). According to Chomsky, both these notions (and many others widely used in philosophy, such as that of truth) are basically inadequate for the naturalistic (= scientific) inquiry on human mind: they are common sense notions, not scientific notions, which cannot, as such, enter in the scientific discussion. Chomsky argues that the notion of reference can be used only when we deal with scientific languages, whose symbols refers to specific things or entities; but when we consider human language expressions, we immediately understand that their reference is vague, in the sense that they can be used to denote many things. For example, the word “book” can be used to denote an abstract object (e.g., “he is reading the book”) or a concrete one (e.g., “the book is on the chair”); the name “London” can denote at the same time a set of buildings, the air of a place and the character of a population (think to the sentence “London is so gray, polluted and sad”). These and other cases induce Chomsky to argue that the only plausible (although not scientific) notion of reference is that of act of reference, a complex phenomenon of language use (performance) which includes many factors (linguistic and not: i.e. beliefs, desires, assumptions about the world, premises, etc.). As Chomsky himself has pointed out, ^[37] this conception of meaning is very close to that adopted by John Austin, Peter Strawson and the late Wittgenstein.^[38]

Inferential role semantics[edit]

Michael Dummett argued against the kind of truth-conditional semantics presented by Davidson. Instead, he argued that basing semantics on assertion conditions avoids a number of difficulties with truth-conditional semantics, such as the transcendental nature of certain kinds of truth condition. He leverages work done in proof-theoretic semantics to provide a kind of inferential role semantics, where:

• The meaning of sentences and grammatical constructs is given by their assertion conditions; and
• Such a semantics is only guaranteed to be coherent if the inferences associated with the parts of language are in logical harmony.

A semantics based upon assertion conditions is called a verificationist semantics: cf. the verificationism of the Vienna Circle.

This work is closely related, though not identical, to one-factor theories of conceptual role semantics.

Critiques of use theories of meaning[edit]

Sometimes between the 1950-1990s, cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor said that use theories of meaning (of the Wittgensteinian kind) seem to assume that language is solely a public phenomenon, that there is no such thing as a «private language». Fodor thinks it is necessary to create or describe the language of thought, which would seemingly require the existence of a «private language».

In the 1960s, David Kellogg Lewis described meaning as use, a feature of a social convention and conventions as regularities of a specific sort. Lewis’ work was an application of game theory in philosophical topics.^[39] Conventions, he argued, are a species of coordination equilibria.

Idea theory of meaning[edit]

The idea theory of meaning (also ideational theory of meaning), most commonly associated with the British empiricist John Locke, claims that meanings are mental representations provoked by signs.^[40]

The term «ideas» is used to refer to either mental representations, or to mental activity in general. Those who seek an explanation for meaning in the former sort of account endorse a stronger sort of idea theory of mind than the latter.

Each idea is understood to be necessarily about something external and/or internal, real or imaginary. For example, in contrast to the abstract meaning of the universal «dog», the referent «this dog» may mean a particular real life chihuahua. In both cases, the word is about something, but in the former it is about the class of dogs as generally understood, while in the latter it is about a very real and particular dog in the real world.

John Locke considered all ideas to be both imaginable objects of sensation and the very unimaginable objects of reflection. He said in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding that words are used both as signs for ideas and also to signify a lack of certain ideas. David Hume held that thoughts were kinds of imaginable entities: his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 2. He argued that any words that could not call upon any past experience were without meaning.

In contrast to Locke and Hume, George Berkeley and Ludwig Wittgenstein held that ideas alone are unable to account for the different variations within a general meaning. For example, any hypothetical image of the meaning of «dog» has to include such varied images as a chihuahua, a pug, and a black Labrador; and this seems impossible to imagine, since all of those particular breeds look very different from one another. Another way to see this point is to question why it is that, if we have an image of a specific type of dog (say of a chihuahua), it should be entitled to represent the entire concept.

Another criticism is that some meaningful words, known as non-lexical items, don’t have any meaningfully associated image. For example, the word «the» has a meaning, but one would be hard-pressed to find a mental representation that fits it. Still another objection lies in the observation that certain linguistic items name something in the real world, and are meaningful, yet which we have no mental representations to deal with. For instance, it is not known what Newton’s father looked like, yet the phrase «Newton’s father» still has meaning.

Another problem is that of composition—that it is difficult to explain how words and phrases combine into sentences if only ideas are involved in meaning.

Eleanor Rosch and George Lakoff have advanced a theory of «prototypes» which suggests that many lexical categories, at least on the face of things, have «radial structures». That is to say, there are some ideal member(s) in the category that seem to represent the category better than other members. For example, the category of «birds» may feature the robin as the prototype, or the ideal kind of bird. With experience, subjects might come to evaluate membership in the category of «bird» by comparing candidate members to the prototype and evaluating for similarities. So, for example, a penguin or an ostrich would sit at the fringe of the meaning of «bird», because a penguin is unlike a robin.

Intimately related to these researches is the notion of a psychologically basic level, which is both the first level named and understood by children, and «the highest level at which a single mental image can reflect the entire category» (Lakoff 1987:46). The «basic level» of cognition is understood by Lakoff as crucially drawing upon «image-schemas» along with various other cognitive processes.

Philosophers Ned Block, Gilbert Harman and Hartry Field, and cognitive scientists G. Miller and P. Johnson-Laird say that the meaning of a term can be found by investigating its role in relation to other concepts and mental states. They endorse a «conceptual role semantics». Those proponents of this view who understand meanings to be exhausted by the content of mental states can be said to endorse «one-factor» accounts of conceptual role semantics and thus to fit within the tradition of idea theories.

See also[edit]

• Definitions of philosophy
• Meaning (existential)
• Semiotics
• Semeiotic

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• Akmajian, Adrian et al (1995), Linguistics: an introduction to language and communication (fourth edition), Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Allan, Keith (1986), Linguistic Meaning, Volume One, New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Arena, Leonardo Vittorio (2012), Nonsense as the Meaning (ebook).
• Austin, J. L. (1962), How to Do Things With Words, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann (1967), The Social Construction of Reality : A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (first edition: 240 pages), Anchor Books.
• Davidson, Donald (2001), Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (second edition), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Dummett, Michael (1981), Frege: Philosophy of Language (second edition), Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Frege, Gottlob (ed. Michael Beaney, 1997), The Frege Reader, Oxford: Blackwell.
• Gauker, Christopher (2003), Words without Meaning, MIT Press.
• Goffman, Erving (1959), Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Anchor Books.
• Grice, Paul (1989), Studies in the Way of Words, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Searle, John and Daniel Vanderveken (1985), Foundations of Illocutionary Logic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Searle, John (1969), Speech Acts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Searle, John (1979), Expression and Meaning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Stonier, Tom (1997), Information and Meaning: An Evolutionary Perspective, London: Springer.

External links[edit]

• «Meaning and Communication». Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• «Meaning and Context-Sensitivity». Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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Main article: Meaning

Main article: Verbal meaning

In linguistics, meaning is the content carried by the words or signs exchanged by people when communicating through language. Restated, the communication of meaning is the purpose and function of language. A communicated meaning will (more or less accurately) replicate between individuals either a direct perception or some sentient derivation thereof. Meanings may take many forms, such as evoking a certain idea, or denoting a certain real-world entity.
Linguistic meaning is studied in philosophy and semiotics, and especially in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, logic, and communication theory. Fields like sociolinguistics tend to be more interested in non-linguistic meanings. Linguistics lends itself to the study of linguistic meaning in the fields of semantics (which studies conventional meanings and how they are assembled) and pragmatics (which studies in how language is used by individuals). Literary theory, critical theory, and some branches of psychoanalysis are also involved in the discussion of meaning. Legal scholars and practitioners have discussed the nature of meaning of statutes, precedents and contracts since Roman law. However, this division of labor is not absolute, and each field depends to some extent upon the others.

Questions about how words and other symbols mean anything, and what it means that something is meaningful, are pivotal to an understanding of language. Since humans are in part characterized by their sophisticated ability to use language, it has also been seen as an essential subject to explore in order to understand human experience.

The nature of meaning

In the introduction, it was mentioned that meanings are considered to be abstract logical objects. However, this explanation has not necessarily satisfied those who have inquired into the nature of meaning. Many philosophers, including Plato, Augustine, Peter Abelard, Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, John Searle, Jacques Derrida, and W.V. Quine, have concerned themselves with providing alternative explanations.

The nature of meaning, its definition, elements, and types, is mainly established by Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas (also known as the AAA framework). According to this classic tradition, ‘meaning is a relationship between two sorts of things: signs and the kinds of things they mean (intend, express or signify)’. One term in the relation of meaning necessarily causes something else to come to the mind in consequence. In other words: ‘a sign is defined as an entity that indicates another entity to some agent for some purpose’.

The types of meanings vary according to the types of the thing that is being represented. Namely:

1. There are the things in the world, which might have meaning;
2. There are things in the world that are also signs of other things in the world, and so, are always meaningful (i.e., natural signs of the physical world and ideas within the mind);
3. There are things that are always necessarily meaningful, such as words, and other nonverbal symbols.

All subsequent inquiries emphasize some particular perspectives within the general AAA framework.

The major contemporary positions of meaning come under the following partial definitions of meaning:

• Psychological theories, exhausted by notions of thought, intention, or understanding;
• Logical theories, involving notions such as intension, cognitive content, or sense, along with extension, reference, or denotation;
• Message, content, information, or communication;
• Truth conditions;
• Usage, and the instructions for usage; and
• Measurement, computation, or operation.

Idea theories of meaning

To the question, «what really is a meaning?», some have answered, «meanings are ideas». By such accounts, «ideas» are either used to refer to mental representations, or to mental activity in general. Those who seek an explanation for meaning in the former sort of account endorse a stronger sort of idea theory of mind than the latter.

Each idea is understood to be necessarily about something external and/or internal, real or imaginary. For example, in contrast to the abstract meaning of the universal «dog», the referent «this dog» may mean a particular real life chihuahua. In both cases, the word is about something, but in the former it is about the class of dogs as generally understood, while in the latter it is about a very real and particular dog in the real world.

Stronger idea theories

The classical empiricists are usually taken to be the most strident defenders of strong forms of idea theories of meaning.

David Hume is well-known for his belief that thoughts were kinds of imaginable entities. (See his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 2). It might be inferred that this perspective also applied to a theory of meaning. Hume was adamant about one point: that any words that could not call upon any past experience were without meaning. His forebearer, John Locke, seemed a bit more reserved in his analysis. Locke considered all ideas to be both imaginable objects of sensation and the very unimaginable objects of reflection. He stressed, in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, that words are used both as signs for ideas — but also to signify the lack of certain ideas.

However, over the past century, strong forms of the idea theories of meaning have been criticized by many philosophers for several reasons.

One criticism made as early as George Berkeley and as late as Ludwig Wittgenstein, was that ideas alone are unable to account for the different variations within a general meaning. For example, any hypothetical image of the meaning of «dog» has to include such varied images as a chihuahua, a pug, and a Black Lab; and this seems impossible to imagine, all of those particular breeds looking very different from one another. Another way to see this point is to question why it is that, if we have an image of a specific type of dog (say of a chihuahua), it should be entitled to represent the entire concept.

Another criticism is that some meaningful words, known as non-lexical items, don’t have any meaningfully associated image. For example, the word «the» has a meaning, but one would be hard-pressed to find a mental representation that fits it. Still another objection lies in the observation that certain linguistic items name something in the real world, and are meaningful, yet which we have no mental representations to deal with. For instance, it is not known what Bismarck’s mother looked like, yet the phrase «Bismarck’s mother» still has meaning.

Another problem is that of composition — that it is difficult to explain how words and phrases combine into sentences if only ideas were involved in meaning.

Weaker idea theories

But the idea theory of meaning has lately been defended in new form by contemporary cognitive scientists Eleanor Rosch and George Lakoff. Called the theory of prototypes, it suggests that many lexical categories, at least on the face of things, have «radial structures». That is to say, there are some ideal member(s) in the category that seem to represent the category better than other members. For example, the category of «birds» may feature the robin as the prototype, or the ideal kind of bird. With experience, subjects might come to evaluate membership in the category of «bird» by comparing candidate members to the prototype and evaluating for similarities. So, for example, a penguin or an ostrich would sit at the fringe of the meaning of «bird», because a penguin is unlike a robin.

Intimately related to these researches is the notion of a psychologically basic level, which is both the first level named and understood by children, and «the highest level at which a single mental image can reflect the entire category». (Lakoff 1987:46) The «basic level» of cognition is understood by Lakoff as crucially drawing upon «image-schemas» along with various other cognitive processes.

There are many contemporary philosophers (Ned Block, Gilbert Harman, H. Field) and cognitive scientists (G. Miller and P. Johnson-Laird) who insist that the meaning of a term can be found by investigating its role in relation to other concepts and mental states. These philosophers endorse a view called «conceptual role semantics«. Those proponents of this view who understand meanings to be exhausted by the content of mental states can be said to endorse «one-factor» accounts of conceptual role semantics. With this emphasis upon meaning as an aspect of human psychology, they fit within the tradition of idea theories.

Truth and meaning

Some have asserted that meaning is nothing substantially more or less than the truth conditions they involve. For such theories, an emphasis is placed upon reference to actual things in the world to account for meaning, with the caveat that reference more or less explains the greater part (or all of) meaning itself.

Logic and language

One set of philosophers who advocated a truth-theory of meaning were the logical positivists, who put stock in the notion that the meaning of a statement arose from how it is verified.

Logic and reality were at the core of their understanding of truth and meaning. To understand this insight, some explanation of the history of logic is necessary.

Classical logicians had known since Aristotle how to codify certain common patterns of reasoning into logical form. But in the 19th century, Western philosophy took a turn toward language philosophy. This shift in interest is tied closely to the development of modern logic. Modern logic began with the work of the German logician Gottlob Frege in the late nineteenth century. Frege, along with contemporaries George Boole and Charles Sanders Peirce, advanced logic significantly by introducing Sentential connectives (like and, or and if-then), and quantifiers like all and some. Much of this work was made possible by the development of set theory.

Gottlob Frege

Modern philosophy of language began with the discussion of sense and reference in Gottlob Frege’s essay Über Sinn und Bedeutung (now usually translated as On Sense and Reference).

Frege noted that proper names present at least two problems in explaining meaning.

1. Suppose, as one might casually say, the meaning of a name is the thing it refers to. Sam, then, means a person in the world who is named Sam. But if the object referred to by the name did not exist — i.e., Pegasus — then, according to that theory, it would be meaningless. And that seems wrong.
2. There may also be two different names that refer to the same object — Hesperus and Phosphorus, for example — which were once used to describe the Morning Star and Evening Star. However, it turns out that astronomers have discovered that the Morning Star and Evening Star are the same thing: both refer to the planet Venus. If the words meant the same thing, then substituting one for the other in a sentence would not result in a sentence that differs in meaning from the original. But in that case, «Hesperus is Phosphorus» would mean the same thing as «Hesperus is Hesperus». This is clearly absurd, since we learn something new and unobvious by the former statement, but not by the latter.

Frege can be interpreted as arguing that it was therefore a mistake to think that the meaning of a name is the thing it refers to. Instead, the meaning must be something else—the «sense» of the word. Two names for the same person, then, can have different senses (or meanings): one referent might be picked out by more than one sense. This sort of theory is called a mediated reference theory.

Frege argued that, ultimately, the same bifurcation of meaning must apply to most or all linguistic categories, such as to quantificational expressions like «All boats float». Ironically enough, it is now accepted by many philosophers as applying to all expressions but proper names.

Bertrand Russell

Logical analysis was further advanced by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead in their groundbreaking Principia Mathematica, which attempted to produce a formal language with which the truth of all mathematical statements could be demonstrated from first principles.

Russell differed from Frege greatly on many points, however. He rejected (or perhaps misunderstood) Frege’s sense-reference distinction. He also disagreed that language was of fundamental significance to philosophy, and saw the project of developing formal logic as a way of eliminating all of the confusions caused by ordinary language, and hence at creating a perfectly transparent medium in which to conduct traditional philosophical argument. He hoped, ultimately, to extend the proofs of the Principia to all possible true statements, a scheme he called logical atomism. For a while it appeared that his pupil Wittgenstein had succeeded in this plan with his «Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus».

Russell’s work, and that of his colleague G. E. Moore, developed in response to what they perceived as the nonsense dominating British philosophy departments at the turn of the century, a kind of British Idealism most of which was derived (albeit very distantly) from the work of Hegel. In response Moore developed an approach («Common Sense Philosophy«) which sought to examine philosophical difficulties by a close analysis of the language used in order to determine its meaning. In this way Moore sought to expunge philosophical absurdities such as «time is unreal». Moore’s work would have significant, if oblique, influence (largely mediated by Wittgenstein) on Ordinary language philosophy.

Other truth theories

The Vienna Circle, a famous group of logical positivists from the early 20th century (closely allied with Russell and Frege), adopted the verificationist theory of meaning. The verificationist theory of meaning (in at least one of its forms) states that to say that an expression is meaningful is to say that there are some conditions of experience that could exist to show that the expression is true. As noted, Frege and Russell were two proponents of this way of thinking.

A semantic theory of truth was produced by Alfred Tarski for the semantics of logic. According to Tarski’s account, meaning consists of a recursive set of rules that end up yielding an infinite set of sentences, «‘p’ is true if and only if p», covering the whole language. His innovation produced the notion of propositional functions discussed on the section on universals (which he called «sentential functions»), and a model-theoretic approach to semantics (as opposed to a proof-theoretic one). Finally, some links were forged to the correspondence theory of truth (Tarski, 1944).

Perhaps the most influential current approach in the contemporary theory of meaning is that sketched by Donald Davidson in his introduction to the collection of essays Truth and Meaning in 1967. There he argued for the following two theses:

• Any learnable language must be statable in a finite form, even if it is capable of a theoretically infinite number of expressions—as we may assume that natural human languages are, at least in principle. If it could not be stated in a finite way then it could not be learned through a finite, empirical method such as the way humans learn their languages. It follows that it must be possible to give a theoretical semantics for any natural language which could give the meanings of an infinite number of sentences on the basis of a finite system of axioms.
• Giving the meaning of a sentence, he further argued, was equivalent to stating its truth conditions. He proposed that it must be possible to account for language as a set of distinct grammatical features together with a lexicon, and for each of them explain its workings in such a way as to generate trivial (obviously correct) statements of the truth conditions of all the (infinitely many) sentences built up from these.

The result is a theory of meaning that rather resembles, by no accident, Tarski’s account.

Davidson’s account, though brief, constitutes the first systematic presentation of truth-conditional semantics. He proposed simply translating natural languages into first-order predicate calculus in order to reduce meaning to a function of truth.

Saul Kripke

Saul Kripke examined the relation between sense and reference in dealing with possible and actual situations. He showed that one consequence of his interpretation of certain systems of modal logic was that the reference of a proper name is necessarily linked to its referent, but that the sense is not. So for instance «Hesperus» necessarily refers to Hesperus, even in those imaginary cases and worlds in which perhaps Hesperus is not the evening star. That is, Hesperus is necessarily Hesperus, but only contingently the morning star.

This results in the curious situation that part of the meaning of a name — that it refers to some particular thing — is a necessary fact about that name, but another part — that it is used in some particular way or situation — is not.

Kripke also drew the distinction between speaker’s meaning and semantic meaning, elaborating on the work of ordinary language philosophers Paul Grice and Keith Donnellan. The speaker’s meaning is what the speaker intends to refer to by saying something; the semantic meaning is what the words uttered by the speaker mean according to the language.

In some cases, people do not say what they mean; in other cases, they say something that is in error. In both these cases, the speaker’s meaning and the semantic meaning seem to be different. Sometimes words do not actually express what the speaker wants them to express; so words will mean one thing, and what people intend to convey by them might mean another. The meaning of the expression, in such cases, is ambiguous.

Critiques of truth-theories of meaning

W.V. Quine attacked both verificationism and the very notion of meaning in his famous essay, «Two Dogmas of Empiricism». In it, he suggested that meaning was nothing more than a vague and dispensable notion. Instead, he asserted, what was more interesting to study was the synonymy between signs. He also pointed out that verificationism was tied to the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, and asserted that such a divide was defended ambiguously. He also suggested that the unit of analysis for any potential investigation into the world (and, perhaps, meaning) would be the entire body of statements taken as a collective, not just individual statements on their own.

Other criticisms can be raised on the basis of the limitations that truth-conditional theorists themselves admit to. Tarski, for instance, recognized that truth-conditional theories of meaning only make sense of statements, but fail to explain the meanings of the lexical parts that make up statements. Rather, the meaning of the parts of statements is presupposed by an understanding of the truth-conditions of a whole statement, and explained in terms of what he called «satisfaction conditions».

Still another objection (noted by Frege and others) was that some kinds of statements don’t seem to have any truth-conditions at all. For instance, «Hello!» has no truth-conditions, because it doesn’t even attempt to tell the listener anything about the state of affairs in the world. In other words, different propositions have different grammatical moods.

Deflationist accounts of truth, sometimes called ‘irrealist’ accounts, are the staunchest source of criticism of truth-conditional theories of meaning. According to them, «truth» is a word with no serious meaning or function in discourse. For instance, for the deflationist, the sentences «It’s true that Tiny Tim is trouble» and «Tiny Tim is trouble» are equivalent. In consequence, for the deflationist, any appeal to truth as an account of meaning has little explanatory power.

The sort of truth-theories presented here can also be attacked for their formalism both in practice and principle. The principle of formalism is challenged by the informalists, who suggest that language is largely a construction of the speaker, and so, not compatible with formalization. The practice of formalism is challenged by those who observe that formal languages (such as present-day quantificational logic) fail to capture the expressive power of natural languages (as is arguably demonstrated in the awkward character of the quantificational explanation of definite description statements, as laid out by Bertrand Russell).

Finally, over the past century, forms of logic have been developed that are not dependent exclusively on the notions of truth and falsity. Some of these types of logic have been called modal logics. They explain how certain logical connectives such as «if-then» work in terms of necessity and possibility. Indeed, modal logic was the basis of one of the most popular and rigorous formulations in modern semantics called the Montague grammar. The successes of such systems naturally give rise to the argument that these systems have captured the natural meaning of connectives like if-then far better than an ordinary, truth-functional logic ever could.

Usage and meaning

Throughout the 20th Century, English philosophy focused closely on analysis of language. This style of analytic philosophy became very influential and led to the development of a wide range of philosophical tools.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was originally an artificial language philosopher, following the influence of Russell, Frege, and the Vienna Circle. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus he had supported the idea of an ideal language built up from atomic statements using logical connectives. However, as he matured, he came to appreciate more and more the phenomenon of natural language. Philosophical Investigations, published after his death, signalled a sharp departure from his earlier work with its focus upon ordinary language use. His approach is often summarised by the aphorism «the meaning of a word is its use in a language».

His work would come to inspire future generations and spur forward a whole new discipline, which explained meaning in a new way. Meaning in natural languages was seen as primarily a question of how the speaker uses language to express intentions.

This close examination of natural language proved to be a powerful philosophical technique. Practitioners who were influenced by Wittgenstein’s approach have included an entire tradition of thinkers, featuring P. F. Strawson, Paul Grice, R. M. Hare, R. S. Peters, and Jürgen Habermas.

J. L. Austin

At around the same time Ludwig Wittgenstein was re-thinking his approach to language, reflections on the complexity of language led to a more expansive approach to meaning. Following the lead of George Edward Moore, J. L. Austin examined the use of words in great detail. He argued against fixating on the meaning of words. He showed that dictionary definitions are of limited philosophical use, since there is no simple «appendage» to a word that can be called its meaning. Instead, he showed how to focus on the way in which words are used in order to do things. He analysed the structure of utterances into three distinct parts: locutions, illocutions and perlocutions. His pupil John Searle developed the idea under the label «speech acts». Their work greatly influenced pragmatics.

Peter Strawson

Past philosophers had understood reference to be tied to words themselves. However, Sir Peter Strawson disagreed in his seminal essay, «On Referring», where he argued that there is nothing true about statements on their own; rather, only the uses of statements could be considered to be true or false.

Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the ordinary use perspective is its insistence upon the distinctions between meaning and use. «Meanings», for ordinary language philosophers, are the instructions for usage of words — the common and conventional definitions of words. Usage, on the other hand, is the actual meanings that individual speakers have — the things that an individual speaker in a particular context wants to refer to. The word «dog» is an example of a meaning, but pointing at a nearby dog and shouting «This dog smells foul!» is an example of usage. From this distinction between usage and meaning arose the divide between the fields of Pragmatics and Semantics.

Yet another distinction is of some utility in discussing language: «mentioning». Mention is when an expression refers to itself as a linguistic item, usually surrounded by quotation marks. For instance, in the expression «‘Opopanax’ is hard to spell», what is referred to is the word itself («opopanax») and not what it means (an obscure gum resin). Frege had referred to instances of mentioning as «opaque contexts».

In his essay, «Reference and Definite Descriptions», Keith Donnellan sought to improve upon Strawson’s distinction. He pointed out that there are two uses of definite descriptions: attributive and referential. Attributive uses provide a description of whoever is being referred to, while referential uses point out the actual referent. Attributive uses are like mediated references, while referential uses are more directly referential.

Paul Grice

The philosopher Paul Grice, working within the ordinary language tradition, understood «meaning» to have two kinds: natural and non-natural. Natural meaning had to do with cause and effect, for example with the expression «these spots mean measels». Non-natural meaning, on the other hand, had to do with the intentions of the speaker in communicating something to the listener.

In his essay, Logic and Conversation, Grice went on to explain and defend an explanation of how conversations work. His guiding maxim was called the cooperative principle, which claimed that the speaker and the listener will have mutual expectations of the kind of information that will be shared. The principle is broken down into four maxims: Quality (which demands truthfulness and honesty), Quantity (demand for just enough information as is required), Relation (relevance of things brought up), and Manner (lucidity). This principle, if and when followed, lets the speaker and listener figure out the meaning of certain implications by way of inference.

The works of Grice led to an avalanche of research and interest in the field, both supportive and critical. One spinoff was called Relevance theory, developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson during the mid-1980s, whose goal was to make the notion of relevance more clear. Similarly, in his work, «Universal pragmatics», Jurgen Habermas began a program that sought to improve upon the work of the ordinary language tradition. In it, he laid out the goal of a valid conversation as a pursuit of mutual understanding.

Inferential role semantics

Main article: Inferential role semantics

Michael Dummett argued against the kind of truth-conditional semantics presented by Davidson. Instead, he argued that basing semantics on assertion conditions avoids a number of difficulties with truth-conditional semantics, such as the transcendental nature of certain kinds of truth condition. He leverages work done in proof-theoretic semantics to provide a kind of inferential role semantics, where:

• The meaning of sentences and grammatical constructs is given by their assertion conditions; and
• Such a semantics is only guaranteed to be coherent if the inferences associated with the parts of language are in logical harmony.

A semantics based upon assertion conditions is called a verificationist semantics: cf. the verificationism of the Vienna Circle.

This work is closely related, though not identical, to one-factor theories of conceptual role semantics.

Critiques of use theories of meaning

Cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor has noted that use theories (of the Wittgensteinian kind) seem to be committed to the notion that language is a public phenomenon — that there is no such thing as a «private language». Fodor opposes such claims because he thinks it is necessary to create or describe the language of thought, which would seemingly require the existence of a «private language».

Some philosophers of language, such as Christopher Gauker, have criticised Gricean theories of communication and meaning for their excessive focus on the efforts of a listener to discover the speaker’s intentions. This, Gauker argues, is not required for linguistic communication, and so will not suffice for theory.

In the 1960s, David Kellogg Lewis published another thesis of meaning as use, as he described meaning as a feature of a social convention (see also convention (philosophy) and conventions as regularities of a specific sort. Lewis’ work was an application of game theory in philosophical matters. Conventions, he argued, are a species of coordination equilibria.

Linguistic approaches to meaning

Linguistic strings can be made up of phenomena like words, phrases, and sentences, and each seems to have a different kind of meaning. Individual words all by themselves, such as the word «bachelor,» have one kind of meaning, because they only seem to refer to some abstract concept. Phrases, such as «the brightest star in the sky», seem to be different from individual words, because they are complex symbols arranged into some order. There is also the meaning of whole sentences, such as «Barry is a bachelor», which is both a complex whole, and seems to express a statement that might be true or false.

In linguistics the fields most closely associated with meaning are semantics and pragmatics. Semantics deals most directly with what words or phrases mean, and pragmatics deals with how the environment changes the meanings of words. Syntax and morphology also have a profound effect on meaning. The syntax of a language allows a good deal of information to be conveyed even when the specific words used are not known to the listener, and a language’s morphology can allow a listener to uncover the meaning of a word by examining the morphemes that make it up.

Semantics

The field of semantics examines the ways in which words, phrases, and sentences can have meaning. Semantics usually divides words into their sense and reference. The reference of a word is the thing it refers to: in the sentence «Give the guy sitting next to you a turn», the guy refers to a specific person, in this case the male one sitting next to you. This person is the phrase’s reference. The sense, on the other hand, is that part of the expression that helps us to determine the thing it refers to. In the example above, the sense is every piece of information that helps to determine that the expression is referring to the male human sitting next to you and not any other object. This includes any linguistic information as well as situational context, environmental details, and so on. This, however, only works for nouns and noun phrases.

There are at least four different kinds of sentences. Some of them are truth-sensitive, which are called indicative sentences. However, other kinds of sentences are not truth-sensitive. They include expressive sentences, like «Ouch!»; performative sentences, such as «I damn thee!»; and commandative sentences, such as «Get the milk from the fridge». This aspect of meaning is called the grammatical mood.

Among words and phrases, different parts of speech can be distinguished, such as noun phrases and adjectival phrases. Each of these have different kinds of meaning; nouns typically refer to entities, while adjectives typically refer to properties. Proper names, which are names that stand for individuals, like «Jerry», «Barry», «Paris,» and «Venus,» are going to have another kind of meaning.

When dealing with verb phrases, one approach to discovering the way the phrase means is by looking at the thematic roles the child noun phrases take on. Verbs do not point to things, but rather to the relationship between one or more nouns and some configuration or reconfiguration therein, so the meaning of a verb phrase can be derived from the meaning of its child noun phrases and the relationship between them and the verb.

Semiotics

Ferdinand de Saussure described language in terms of signs, which he in turn divided into signifieds and signifiers. The signifier is the sound of the linguistic object (like Socrates, Saussure didn’t much concern himself with the written word). The signified, on the other hand, is the mental construction or image associated with the sound. The sign, then, is essentially the relationship between the two.

Signs themselves exist only in opposition to other signs, which means that «bat» has meaning only because it is not «cat» or «ball» or «boy». This is because signs are essentially arbitrary, as any foreign language student is well aware: there is no reason that bat couldn’t mean «that bust of Napoleon over there» or «this body of water». Since the choice of signifiers is ultimately arbitrary, the meaning cannot somehow be in the signifier. Saussure instead defers meaning to the sign itself: meaning is ultimately the same thing as the sign, and meaning means that relationship between signified and signifier. This, in turn, means that all meaning is both within us and communal. Signs mean by reference to our internal lexicon and grammar, and despite their being a matter of convention, that is, a public thing, signs can only mean something to the individual — what red means to one person may not be what red means to another. However, while meanings may vary to some extent from individual to individual, only those meanings which stay within a boundary are seen by other speakers of the language to refer to reality: if one were to refer to smells as red, most other speakers would assume the person is talking nonsense (although statements like this are common among people who experience synesthesia).

Pragmatics

Pragmatics studies the ways that context affects meaning. The two primary forms of context important to pragmatics are linguistic context and situational context.

Linguistic context refers to the language surrounding the phrase in question. The importance of linguistic context becomes exceptionally clear when looking at pronouns: in most situations, the pronoun him in the sentence «Joe also saw him» has a radically different meaning if preceded by «Jerry said he saw a guy riding an elephant» than it does if preceded by «Jerry saw the bank robber» or «Jerry saw your dog run that way».

Situational context, on the other hand, refers to every non-linguistic factor that affects the meaning of a phrase. Nearly anything can be included in the list, from the time of day to the people involved to the location of the speaker or the temperature of the room. An example of situational context at work is evident in the phrase «it’s cold in here», which can either be a simple statement of fact or a request to turn up the heat, depending on, among other things, whether or not it is believed to be in the listener’s power to affect the temperature.

When we speak we perform speech acts. A speech act has an illocutionary point or illocutionary force. For example, the point of an assertion is to represent the world as being a certain way. The point of a promise is to put oneself under an obligation to do something. The illucutionary point of a speech act must be distinguished from its perlocutionary effect, which is what it brings about. A request, for example, has as its illocutionary point to direct someone to do something. Its perlocutionary effect may be the doing of the thing by the person directed. Sentences in different grammatical moods, the declarative, imperative, and interrogative, tend to perform speech acts of specific sorts. But in particular contexts one may perform a different speech act using them than that for which they are typically put to use. Thus, as noted above, one may use a sentence such as «it’s cold in here» not only to make an assertion but also to request that one’s auditor turn up the heat. Speech acts include performative utterances, in which one performs the speech act by using a first person present tense sentence which says that one is performing the speech act. Examples are: ‘I promise to be there’, ‘I warn you not to do it’, ‘I advise you to turn yourself in’, etc. Some specialized devices for performing speech acts are exclamatives and phatics, such as ‘Ouch!’ and ‘Hello!’, respectively. The former is used to perform an expressive speech act, and the latter for greeting someone.

Pragmatics, then, reveals that meaning is both something affected by and affecting the world. Meaning is something contextual with respect to language and the world, and is also something active toward other meanings and the world.

In applied pragmatics (such as neuro-linguistic programming), meaning is constituted by an individual through the active significance generated by the mental processing of stimuli input from the sensory organs. Thus, people can see, hear, feel/touch, taste and smell, and form meanings out of those sensory experiences, actively and interactively.

Even though a sensory input created by a stimulus cannot be articulated in language or signs of any kind, it can nevertheless have a meaning. This can be experimentally demonstrated by showing that people behaviourally respond in specific, non-arbitrary ways to sensing a stimulus, consciously or sub-consciously, even although they have no way of telling what it is or means, and no possible way of knowing what it is or what it means.

Non-Objectified Meaning

The field of semantics is often understood as a branch of linguistics, but non-idealized meaning as a type of semantics is more accurately a branch of psychology and ethics. Meaning in so far is it is objectified by not considering particular situations and the real intentions of speakers and writers examines the ways in which words, phrases, and sentences can seem to have meaning. This type of semantics is contrasted with communication-focused semantics where understanding the intent and assumptions of particular speakers and writers is primary as in the idea that people mean and not words, sentences or propositions. An underlying difference is that where causes are identified with relations or laws then it is normal to objectify meaning and consider it a branch of linguistics, while if causes are identified with particular agents, objects, or forces as if to cause means to influence as most historians and practical people assume, then real or non-objectified meaning is primary and we are dealing with intent or purpose as an aspect of human psychology, especially since human intent can be and often is independent of language and linguistics.

We are all familiar with how good or bad reputation can encourage or discourage us from reading or studying about certain people, positions, or philosophies even before we have studied them.This is normally called pre-judgment or prejudice. To determine whether a reputation is deserved we normally have to carry out extensive and balanced research into human intent and assumptions in psychology, and in the sphere of language and linguistics where this research tends to focus not only on the differences beteeen denotation and connotation, but especially on the presence and often tenacious character of value connotation, that is, the good or bad associations we make with words. Re-definition can change denotation for some people, but value connotation almost always remains, and is merely re-directed at a different target. Unfortunately, while dictionaries mention the most common denotations or main meanings we associate with words they normally ignore value connotation. Indeed, it is value connotation or the effect of using it which results in denotation becoming prejudicial, even denottion which is imagined to be fair, neutral or objective. Indeed, much rhetoric is based on selecting words more for their value associations than for their denotations, and to expose and correct this bad habit it is normally wise to focus on the most likely intent and assumptions of particular people than to imagine that words have meaning in themselves or that either meaning or language can be genuinely objective, since in that process we are likely to forget the existence and dominating character of value connotation which is subjective in a bad sense, that is, which makes persuasion more an aspect of rhetoric and deception rather than judging people, positions and philosophy more by weight of evidence or legitimate argumentation.

Meaning as intent seems to be the oldest use of the word and goes back to Anglo-Saxon and still exists in German as an association made with the verb «meinen» as to think or intend. To repeat, the practical value of focusing on the likely intent and assumptions of speakers is that it can often expose the use of value connotation as rhetoric. Indeed, rhetoric is a form of miscommunication because one-sidedness is often concealed. If it is exposed it can be easier to guard against. Some rhetoric is overt, but the most dangerous, that is, the most persuasive kinds, often seem fair or positive by subtly using the views or language of the victim plus value connotation to disguise imbalance or falsehood. In fact, many words inconspicuously suggest something good or bad and are employed as a substitute for evidence or argument. Thus, wary readers when faced with rhetoric wisely ask «What do you mean?» That is, what is your aim or purpose? If prejudgment or attempted persuasion is deliberate, then it can create ethical problems. It was Sir Francis Bacon in his criticism of four idols which need to be overcome for truth-focused, non-idealized science and technology to best develop who has been most influential in making this point and in discouraging misleading rhetoric. Meaning as intent is subjective in seeming or being mental and such seems to be a generally uncontested fact, but subjectivity as using pejorative denotation or connottion especially about basic classification as in philosophy as reflected in expressions like «metaphysical». «psychologistic», and «meaningless» are subjective in a second sense and reprehensible or immoral by blocking fair or any access to other points of view. What is ethically most unfortunate is «softsoaping» the victim with a tone or manner which the deceived person would not accept if expressed by plain, genuinely balanced expression using a normal tone of voice. In the opinion of supporters of non-objectified semantics and meaning as intent both the practice of using one word «refutations» as in blatant rhetoric and its often more effective softspoken cousin should be replaced by neutral and inclusive classification or by contrasting views to create a balanced effect between different positions in philosophy and science, thus allowing for more fair understanding of all points of view, with each perspective fairly treated, that is, which avoid imbalance, prejudgment, rhetoric, and other misuse of psychology or language. After fair and inclusive basic classification has been introduced then one can do additional research and try to find out which point of view is most probably true. But prejudgment is shameful even when not immoral. See S.I. Hayakawa, The Use and Misuse of Language, 1962 [1942].

It was during the 1930s that some well-intentioned philosophers turned against intent-based semantics because the notion of intent seemed mental or «psychologistic». But this was ironic because it obscured the fact that their own basic assumptions tended to use classification which rejected most or all other positions as «metaphysical», «psychologistic», or «meaningless» without sufficient accomanying evidence or argument to justify this form of exclusion by prejudicial description, a practice which was truly unfair and misleading about many of the positions they opposed including intent-based semantics whose supporters were seriously looking for ways to become more fair and less rhetorical. Negative reaction to meaning as intent, especially among logical positivists of the period, was also influenced by opposition to Korzybski’s much abused theory of General Semantics, when the intent-based approach to meaning was much older, deeper and almost certainly more valid. See the works of Sir Fancis Bacon and the two ladies most responsible for introducing the term «semantics» into English as theory of meaning, namely, Victoria, Lady Welby and one of her daughters. More recently John T. Blackmore has attempted to revive resistance to rhetoric and those philosophical, linguistic, and semantic positions which seem to rest most heavily on them by re-emphaizing both the fundamental character of meaning as intent and its use in exposing and helping to replace rhetoric and other misleding practices by pointing out the slanted character of value connotation and the falsehood that both connotation and denotation can be objective or that the alleged meaning of words can or should take precedence over what people, the users of language, mean. People can be relatively objective in the sense of being fair, but the many different meanings associated with the word «absolute» make it hard to give a simple answer about whether absolute objectivity is possible about meaning or language, even if words themselves could determine the meanings or associations made with them, which hardly seems possible. As for conventions and habits of expression they have value, but in particular circumstance where a speaker ot writer may be using other assumptions than we do, then inquiring after intent can be vital if maximum communication is to take place.

In linguistics the fields normally most closely associated with objectified meaning are linguistic semantics and some aspects of pragmatics. Objectified semantics deals most directly with what words or phrases generally appear to mean, On the other hand, non-objectified semantics and other types of pragmatics deal with how author intent and the environment may actually help encourage rhetoric-free use of language. Sub-branches of linguistics like syntax and morphology, however, often seem to influence the creation and use of objectified meaning. Furthermore, the syntax of a language allows a good deal of information to be conveyed even when the specific words used are not known to the listener, and a language’s morphology can allow a listener to uncover the general uses of a word by examining the morphemes that make it up.

Objectified Meaning

The field of semantics in so far is it is objectified by not considering particular situations and the real intentions of speakers and writers examines the ways in which words, phrases, and sentences can have meaning. This type of semantics is contrasted with communication-focused semantics where understanding the intent and assumptions of particular speakers and writers is primary as in the idea that people mean and not words, sentences or proposition. An underlying difference is that where causes are identified with relations or laws then it is normal to objectify meaning, while if causes are identified with particular agents, objects, or forces as if to cause means to influence as most historians and practical people assume, then real or non-objectified meaning is primary.

Objectified semantics in much linguistics (following Gottlob Frege) usually divides words into their sense and reference. The reference of a word is the thing it refers to: In the sentence «Give the guy sitting next to you a turn», the guy refers to a specific person, in this case the male one sitting next to you. This person is the phrase’s reference. The sense, on the other hand, is that part of the expression that helps us to determine the thing it refers to. In the example above, the sense is every piece of information that helps to determine that the expression is referring to the male human sitting next to you and not any other object. This includes any linguistic information as well as situational context, environmental details, and so on. On the other hand, following J.S. Mill, sense is often called connotation and reference denotation. Furthermore, in semantics outside of both linguistics and philosophy, denotation normally means the primary use of a word and connotation means the associations made with the word, including value connotations which indicate whether the author is praising or criticizing what is denoted or referred to.

In objectified semantics there are at least four different kinds of sentences. Some of them are truth-sensitive, which are called indicative sentences. However, other kinds of sentences are not truth-sensitive. They include expressive sentences, «Ouch!»; performative sentences, such as «I baptise you»; and commandative sentences, such as «Get the milk from the fridge». This aspect of meaning is called the grammatical mood. Idealized meaning has value when attempting to understand how words are normally used, while in non-objectified or practical meaning especially in particular situations and where irony, satire, humor.

Among words and phrases, different parts of speech can be distinguished, such as noun phrases and adjectival phrases. Each of these have different kinds of meaning; nouns typically refer to entities, while adjectives typically refer to properties. Proper names, which are names that stand for individuals, like «Jerry», «Barry», «Paris,» and «Venus,» are going to have another kind of meaning.

When dealing with verb phrases, one approach to discovering the way the phrase means is by looking at the thematic roles the child noun phrases take on. Verbs do not point to things, but rather to the relationship between one or more nouns and some configuration or reconfiguration therein, so the meaning of a verb phrase can be derived from the meaning of its child noun phrases and the relationship between them and the verb.

See also

• Meaning (non-linguistic)

Fields

• General Semantics, semiotics, Semantics, Pragmatics

Perspectives

• logical positivism
• ordinary language philosophy

Theories

• causal theory of names
• theory of descriptions
• definite descriptions
• universal grammar

Considerations

• idea
• image
• information
• sense
• symbol
• symbol grounding problem
• metaphor

Important theorists

• J. L. Austin
• Roland Barthes
• Noam Chomsky
• Umberto Eco
• Viktor Frankl
• Gottlob Frege
• Paul Grice
• Saul Kripke
• Charles Peirce
• Willard Van Orman Quine
• Bertrand Russell
• Ferdinand de Saussure
• John Searle
• Claude Lévi-Strauss
• P. F. Strawson
• Ludwig Wittgenstein

Further reading

• Akmajian, Adrian, Richard Demers, Ann Farmer, and Robert Harnish. Linguistics: an introduction to language and communication, 4th edition. 1995. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Allan, Keith. Linguistic Meaning, Volume One. 1986. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Austin, J. L. How to Do Things With Words. 1962. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality : A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. 1967. First Anchor Books Edition. 240 pages.
• Davidson, Donald. Inquiries into Truth and Meaning, 2nd edition. 2001. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Dummett, Michael. Frege: Philosophy of Language, 2nd Edition. 1981. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Frege, Gottlob. The Frege Reader. Edited by Michael Beaney. 1997. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Gauker, Christopher. Words without Meaning. 2003. MIT Press.
• Goffman, Erving. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. 1959. Anchor Books.
• Grice, Paul. Studies in the Way of Words. 1989. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Searle, John and Daniel Vanderveken. Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. 1985. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Searle, John. Speech Acts. 1969. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Searle, John. Expression and Meaning. 1979. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Stonier, Tom: Information and Meaning. An Evolutionary Perspective. 1997. XIII, 255 p. 23,5 cm.

External links

• Meaning at CCMS
• Semiotics and Saussure at CCMS
• A summary of Wittengenstein’s view of meaning
• Meaning.ch research group
• USECS as the general catalog of meanings
• «Conceptual role semantics» by Ned Block