meaning?next_slideshow=2 Geoffrey Leechin his ‘Semantics - The Study of Meaning’ (1974) breaks down meaning into seven types giving importance to conceptual meaning. 1. Conceptual or Denotative Meaning :Conceptual meaning is also called logical or cognitive meaning. It corresponds to the primary dictionary definition. It is the For example, ‘Need/e” may be a “thin. “sharp” “instrument”2. Connotative Meaning: It is something that goes beyond the referent of a word and hints at its attributes in the real world. Thus purely conceptual content of ‘woman’ is +humam + female+ adult but the psychosocial connotations could be ‘gregarious’ els, ‘having maternal instinct’ 5! sj: ¢ <) or ‘babbling’, +445 experienced in cookery’ =) 4 35 ka! Connotations vary age to age. society to society and culture to culture.Social Meaning 3. Social Meaning : It is the meaning conveyed by the piece of language about the social context of its use. The interpreting of a text is dependent on our knowledge of stylistics and other variations of language. We recognize some words or pronunciation as being dialectical i.e. as telling us something about the regional or social origin of the speaker. e.g. “lL ain't done nothing” The line tells us about the speaker and that is the speaker is probably a black American, poor and uneducated “Pavement’ is used in British English and “sidewalk” in American English.Seven Types of Meaning Stylistic variation represents the social variation. This is because styles show the raphical region social class of the speaker. For example, ‘steed’. ‘horse and ‘nag’ are synonymous. They all mean q kind of animal i.e. Horse. But they differ in style and so have various social meaning. ‘Steed’ is used in poetry; ‘horse’ is used in general, while ‘nag’ is slang.Seven Types of Meaning 4. Affective or Emotive Meaning : It is what is conveyed about the personal feelings or attitude towards the listener. e.g. + ‘home’ for a sailor/spldier or expatriate * ‘mother’ for a motherless child will have special effective. emotive quality. e.g. A speaker says to a listener “You are a vicious tyrant and a villainous reprobation and | hate you” Here, the speaker seems to have a very negative attitude towards his listener. This is called affective meaning. mela SI coil med 5 J « pedis cil Spa Ale polka tyauthaSB ala ChandSeven Types of Meaning * But very often we are more discreet (cautious) and convey our attitude indirectly. e.g. “lam terribly sorry. but if you would be so kind as to lower your voice a little” The sentence conveys our annoyance in a scaled down manner for the sake of politeness. + Factors such as Intonation and voice quality are also important in this type of meaning. * Also, there are elements of language such as interjections —>4! like (Aha! Wow! Yippee!),whose main function is to express emotions.5. Reflected Meaning: What is communicated through association with another sense of the same expression. It arises when a word has more than one conceptual meaning. I + Reflected meaning can be found in taboo words. In the past the word “intercourse” was used to mean” communication” J! =) The word ‘intercourse’ is now associated with (sexual intercourse). Auaalld4uli The word Discourse in now used instead. Also, the word “gay” in the pasthad the meaning of “ happy”, butnow it means “ homosexual.” 2 Is he gay?Collocative Meaning 6. Collocative Meaning: It is the meaning which a word acquires in the company of certain words. Words collocate or co-occur with certaln words only e.g. Big business not large or great. ‘Pretty’ and ‘handsome’ indicate ‘good looking’. The word ‘pretty’ collocates with — girls. woman. village. gardens. flowers, etc. However, the word ‘handsome’ collocates with — ‘boys’ men, etc. so ‘pretty woman’ and ‘handsome man.’ See the meaning of heavy how it changed: heavy news (a piece of sad news); heavy schedule (a very tight schedule) db gus 5aThematic Meaning 7. Thematic Meaning: The way we order our message conveys what is important and what is not. Thus, active voice is different from passive voice though its conceptual meaning is the same. 1. Mrs. Smith gave the first prize. 2.The first prize was given by Mrs. Smith. In the first sentence “who gave away the prize “is more important, but in the second sentence “what did Mrs. Smith gave is important”. Thus, the change of focus changed the meaningSeven Types of Meaning 3. Jolin is married to Mary. 4. Mary is married to John. Who is more important in the 3S! sentence? In the 429? 5. | will do it tomorrow. ( neutral way) 6. Tomorrow, | will do it. (a promise)More Examples: Conceptual Meaning/ Dictionary Meaning Blood: the red liquid that flows through the bodies of humans and animals I Pig: an animal with pink, black or brown skin, shortlegs, a broad nose and a shorttail which curls round itself. Associative Meaning: = Blood= (Personal) accident, killing, oblation ( Sacrifice) * Pig = (Cultural connotation) dirty and disgusting, illegal meat