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Seven Types of Meaning
Seven Types of Meaning
Semantics is a study of the meaning of lexical items and other parts of language. There are seven
types of meaning in Semantics; conceptual, connotative, stylistic, affective, reflected, collocative
and thematic meaning. This study focuses on only two of the types of meaning: conceptual
meaning and connotative meaning.
1/ Conceptual meaning
- The second principle, that of structure, is the principle by which larger linguistic units are
built up out of smaller units, (for example) in this sentence:
(We are able to analyze the sentence syntactically into a its constituents parts)
2/ Associative meaning
The associative meaning of an expression has to do with individual mental understandings of the
speaker. They, in turn, can be broken up into six sub-types: connotative, collocative, social, affective,
reflected and thematic
A/ Connotative meaning
“The communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to” (Leech 1981: 12).
Connotation is the real-world value a speaker associates with an expression. In other words,
it is the meaning above the conceptual meaning and it may vary according to culture,
background or society. Thus, connotative meaning can be subjective or unstable. It depends
very much on how an individual or society perceives a word. It is the association that we make
in our mind of what these lexical items represent. (For example), In English, the word dog may
have the connotation loyalty, apart from its referential meaning.
When we analyze word meanings we should distinguish two separate concepts called
denotative and connotative meaning; “sea” denotes a large body of water but connotes a sense
of danger, instability…
One aspect concerning the connotative meaning is the social meaning (sometimes termed stylistic
meaning) which varies between age-groups, sex, social class and cultures. Dialect can be a good
example.
It is a piece of language that conveys about the social circumstances of its use. Pavement is used
in British English and sidewalk in American English. Residence is formal and home is casual.
C/ Affective meaning
Is what is communicated of the feeling or attitude of the speaker/writer toward what is referred
to? (For example), by scaling our remarks according to politeness with the object of getting
people to be quiet, we might say either:
1/ I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but I wonder if you would be so kind as to lower you voices a little
2/ will you belt up
Factors such as intonation and voice-timber (tone of voice) are also important here . And there
are elements of language such as interjections, like (Aha! Yippee!), Whose main function is to express
emotions.
D/ Reflected meaning
What is communicated through association with another sense of the same expression. So it
is the meaning that arises in cases of multiple conceptual meaning, when one sense of a
word forms part of our response to another sense.
In the church service, the synonymous expression (the comforter), it sounds warm
‘comforting’ but in the religious context it means the strengthener or supporter. i.e sense of
the word seems to ‘rub off ’ on another sense.
E/ Collocative meaning
Collocative meaning is the associated meaning a word acquires in line with the meaning of
words which tend to co-occur with it. Both pretty and handsome mean good-looking but
they differ in collocative meaning. Pretty often co-occurs with girl, woman, flower, skirt, etc.
Handsome often collocates with boy, man, car, overcoat, etc.
See (green ideas sleep furiously) to more understand the meaning of collocation.
2/ Thematic meaning
It concerns itself with how the order of words spoken affects the meaning that is entailed.
If we say:
1/ I will do it tomorrow. In a neutral way.
2/ tomorrow, I will do it. Showing a promise.
Certainly these have different communicative value: the active sentence seems to answer
‘what did Mrs. Bessi Smith donate?’, while the passive sentence seems to answer ‘who
donated the first prize’.
Furthermore…
Antonymy (A is the opposite of B; e.g. cold is the opposite of warm)
Homonym. Two concepts, A and B, are expressed by the same symbol. Ex-ample: Both a
financial institution and a edge of a river are expressed by the word bank (the word has two
senses).
Incompatibility. It has to do with the componential analysis which is also called feature analysis
or contrast analysis, refers to the description of the meaning of words through structured sets of
semantic features, which are given as “present”, “absent” or “indifferent with reference to feature”.
(Example)
See the example of man and woman_ under the conceptual meaning_
1/ they must share the same lexical field (in semantics) _ Hyponymous relationships_ (the human
race)