Types of Meaning

3. Social Meaning
Social meaning is the meaning conveyed by the piece of language about the social context of
language use. The interpretation of a text is dependent on our knowledge of stylistics and other
variations of language in addition to a culture by which a language affected. We recognize some
linguistic expressions in words or pronunciation as being stylistic or socially bound that is
telling us something about levels and position of word usages in relation to social effect. In other
words, social meaning is related to the situation in which an utterance is used in society.
Based on the explanation above, social meaning is concerned with the social
circumstances of the use of a linguistic expression. For example, some stylistic usages let us
know something of the social relationship between the speaker and the hearer. The following are
some examples which have social sense or meaning in English:
eat ----- dine
will ------- would ------- would like
kid -------- child
guy ------- boy
gonna ------- going to
For examples:
“I ain’t done nothing”.
The line tells us about the speaker and that is the speaker is probably a black American,
underprivileged and uneducated. Stylistic variation represents the social variation. This is
because styles show the geographical region social class of the speaker. Style helps us to know
about the period, field and status of the discourse. Some words are similar to others as far as their
conceptual meaning is concerned. But they have different stylistic meaning.

For example:
Steed, horse and nag are synonymous. They all mean a kind of animal, that is horse. But they
differ in style and so have various social meaning:
steed = used in poetry
horse = used in general
nag = slang
 The word “home” can have many use:
domicile = official
residence = formal
abode = poetic
home = ordinary use
The word “teacher”, in the past had meaning as person who gives/shares their knowledge.
However, today, in logical or real meaning, it means person who works as teacher in an
institutionary.
The illocutionary force of an utterance also can have social meaning. According to the
social situation, a sentence may be uttered as request, an apology, a warning or a threat, for
example, in the sentence “I haven’t got a knife” has the common meaning in isolation. However,
this sentence uttered to waiter mean a request for a knife.

4) Affective or Emotive Meaning

Some linguists describe it as emotive association or effects of words evoked in the reader or
listener. It is what is communicated of the feelings and attitudes of the speaker or writer towards
the listener or reader. Some feelings or attitudes are usually negative or insincere in nature. They
are normally expressed through such forms of language use as insults, flattery, hyperbole or
sarcasm.
In affective meaning, language is used to express personal feelings or attitude to the
listener or to the subject matter of his discourse. Affective meaning is often conveyed through
conceptual, connotative content of the words used.

For example:
“You are a vicious tyrant and a villainous reprobation and I hate you” Or “I hate you,
you idiot”.
Here speaker seems to have a very negative attitude towards his listener. This is called affective
meaning. However, very often we are more discreet (cautious) and convey our attitude indirectly.
For example:
“I am terribly sorry but if you would be so kind as to lower your voice a little”
In addition, intonation and voice quality are also important here. For example: when we ask
somebody to open the door = “Would you open the door?” (in this term we use low intonation)
Words like darling, sweetheart or hooligan, vandal have inherent emotive quality and
they can be used neutrally. I.A. Richards argued that emotive meaning distinguishes literature or
poetic language from factual meaning of science. Finally it must be noted that affective meaning
is largely a parasitic category. It overlaps heavily with style, connotation and conceptual content.