meaning (n.)

The basic notion is used in LINGUISTICS both as a datum and as a criterion of analysis: linguists study meaning, and also use meaning as a criterion for studying other aspects of LANGUAGE (especially through such notions as CONTRASTIVITY and DISTINCTIVENESS). The topic of ‘meaning’ in the context of language, however, necessitates reference to non-linguistic factors, such as thought, situation, knowledge, intention and use. It is the difficulty in drawing clear dividing-lines between such notions that indicates why so many other academic practitioners are involved in the study of meaning along with linguistics – philosophers and logicians especially, but also psychologists, sociologists, literary critics, theologians and others. Linguists’ primary interests are distinguished by the attention they pay to the analysis of meaning (meaningfulness, meaninglessness) in the context of everyday speech (rather than, say, in the context of literature, or abstract reasoning), by their comparative interests (comparing the way meaning is structured in a range of languages, and how meaning changes over time), and by their attempt to integrate meaning with the other COMPONENTS of a general linguistic theory (especially with GRAMMAR). These emphases characterize the linguistic study of meaning, SEMANTICS. There was continuing debate, in the later decades of the twentieth century (especially in GENERATIVE grammar), about the place of semantics in relation to SYNTAX, when considering the DERIVATION of sentences.

Linguistics shares with other disciplines the concern to isolate the several factors which contribute to the total interpretation, or signification, of a message, as this provides the essential perspective within which the specifically intralinguistic properties of meaning can be identified. These factors – the ‘meanings of meaning’ as they are sometimes called – have been variously labelled; and, while it is impossible to generalize about usage (in view of the many technical senses these labels have in various theories), labels do cluster around three major themes. When the emphasis is on the relationship between language, on the one hand, and the entities, events, states of affairs, etc., which are external to speakers and their language, on the other, terms such as ‘REFERENTIAL/DESCRIPTIVE/DENOTATIVE/ EXTENSIONAL/factual/objective meaning’ have been used. When the emphasis is on the relationship between language and the mental state of the speaker, two sets of terms are used: the personal, emotional aspects are handled by such terms as ‘ATTITUDINAL/AFFECTIVE/CONNOTATIVE/EMOTIVE/EXPRESSIVE meaning’; the intellectual, factual aspects involve such terms as ‘COGNITIVE/IDEATIONAL meaning’. When the emphasis is on the way variations in the EXTRALINGUISTIC situation affect the understanding and interpretation of language, terms such as ‘CONTEXTUAL/FUNCTIONAL/interpersonal/social/SITUATIONAL’ have been used. ‘Contextual’, along with ‘TEXTUAL meaning’, is also used to refer to those factors which affect the interpretation of a sentence which derive from the rest of the DISCOURSE or TEXT within which the sentence occurs. Within linguistics, the role each linguistic LEVEL plays in the total interpretation of a sentence is often referred to as the ‘meaning’ of that level. The main levels involved are lexical meaning, the meaning of LEXICAL ITEMS; and grammatical meaning (or structural meaning), the meaning of GRAMMATICAL structures. This approach has been extended by some linguists (e.g. FIRTHIANS) to include other linguistic levels, e.g. phonetic meaning, phonological meaning (as in the structural use of alliteration or rhyme in poetry). The term semantic meaning may be used whenever one wants to emphasize the content, as opposed to the form or reference, of linguistic units. Specific aspects of the content of sentences may be singled out for special attention, e.g. the notion of ‘PROPOSITIONAL meaning’. A meaning postulate is a notion used in MODEL-THEORETIC SEMANTICS which restricts the possible interpretations of an object language (L) by describing lexical meanings in terms of analytically true sentences in L.