MEANING OF MEANING

MEANING OF MEANING

There is no specific definition about the meaning of meaning, different scholars tries to define this term on how they think, feel into their mind. The following are definitions of meaning of meaning.

According to Ogden and Richards (1923) says meaning of meaning as we use word “mean” refers to express our intention. Example the red signal means stop. That is the way of indicating what the red signal signifies, this means that signs used to indicate other signs. Instead of this meaning they come to other definition on how they see the meaning of meaning. Example; says meaning of meaning is the thing to which the speaker of that word believes himself to be referring. Also meaning is the thing to which the hearer of those words believes is being referred.

These scholars continue to say meaning is an intrinsic property of something, when we say meaning is an intrinsic we mean is a property of a substance that is independent of the amount of the substance present. This definition refers to many different ways in which meaning is understood.

According to Pushpinder (2011), defines meaning by thinking the relationship between words and the objects which word represent. Example we may ask what is the meaning of a word “cow”. This may refer to an animal who has a certain properties distinguished from other animals, that this animal has four legs.

Due to this idea we can say that the meaning of the word is related or stand for the actual objects but there are meaning of a word is not refers to the object refer to, for example the word “love” that exist in the mind.

According to Simon (1995), defines meaning as it involved drawing on a memory contents. This helps the clarification if word like “content” is clear than “meaning”. Meaning comes from the intention of people. So intentions are fundamental than meaning if not we need an account of how intentions flow from meanings perhaps “intention”= “meanings” because “intentions”= “content” if intentions are more fundamental than it is not clear why this is a cognitive science theory, because intention is used in  the broad sense in which this term is used in the contemporary philosophy. This meaning is seems to be appeal to criteria of identity and similarity that are independent of what is going on in people’s heads which often absorbed in creating multiple meaning.

According to Babito (1984) says meaning of meaning is the term that has different connotations according to context. This means the term meaning could connotate something to which the speaker believes to be referring to. Example the sentence “He is a woman”, the word woman has been used connotatively either to mean weak or kind, continue to say meaning can be defined   in terms of entires in the dictionary whether asked the meaning of certain word one consults the dictionary. Meaning could connotate the practical consequences of anything in our experience. Example the word “freedom” could connotate differently to a prisoner or a student or a child at home. These variations supposed to be more careful to what is really meant by certain expression.

Bloomfield (1933) says meaning of meaning is a non- physical process, a thought, concept, image, feeling, act of will that happens inside the speaker preceding the emission of the form and of language as the expression of the ideas or feelings. Continues to say the meaning statement is not contained in the statement itself instead, it is connected to the practical events that precede and follow it related both to the speaker and to the listener. Speech ulterance trial and unimportant in itself is important because it has a meaning. The statement of meaning is therefore the weak point in language study and will remain so until human knowledge advances very far beyond its present state.

Before looking the different theories of meaning let see the types of meaning in order to relate with the previous definitions concerning the meaning of meaning in order to understand and clarify how the meaning is.

According to Leech (1974) breaks down meanings into seven types or ingredients giving primary to conceptual meaning.

Conceptual or denotative meaning, this is also called logical or cognitive meaning whereby it is a basic proportional meaning which corresponds to the primary dictionary definition. This conceptual meaning it has sophisticated organization based on the principle of contractiveness and hierarchical structure. For example the word “boy”= “human+ male- adult. So this conceptual meaning is the literal meaning of the word indicating the idea or concept to which it refers, and the aims of conceptual meaning is to provide an appropriate semantic representation to a sentence and to distinguish one meaning from the meaning of other sentence. In communication to be understood they depend on conceptual meaning.

Social meaning, this is a type of meaning whereby the meaning is conveyed by the piece of language about the social context of its uses. This social meaning is related to the situation in which ulterance is used. For example some dialectic words inform us about the regional and social background of the speaker so according to the certain place the speaker and the listener have their different style that uses in their communication. For example “come on yaar, be a sport. Don’t be lallu”. The social meaning can be that.

Connotative meaning, this is among types of meaning whereby it is a communicative value of an expression over and above its purely conceptual content. It is something that goes beyond mere referent of a word and hits at its attributes in the real world. This conceptual meaning it is something more than the dictionary meaning. Sometimes connotation vary age to age and society to society. For example old age “woman” non-trouser wearing or sari wearing In Indian context must have seemed definite connotation in the past. Present “woman” sari wear/ T-shirt/Jeans wearing. Also connotation varies from person to person.

For example connotation of the word “woman” for misogyrust and a person of feminist vary. So connotative meaning is regarded as incidental comparatively unstable in determinant open ended variable according to age, culture and individual.

Affective or emotive meaning, this meaning for some linguists refers to the emotive association or effects of words evoked in the reader, listener. This is what is conveyed about the personal feelings or attitude towards the listener, for example “home” for a soldier or expatriate and “mother” for a motherless child, a married woman. Affective meaning refers to what is conveyed about the feeling and attitude of the speaker through use of language means that attitude to listener as well as attitude to what he is saying. And this meaning is often conveyed through conceptual, connotative content of the words used, example of the sentence “you are a vicious tyrant and a villainous reprobation and I hate you”. This sentence is a little doubt about the speaker feelings towards the listener, here speaker seems to have a very negative attitude towards his listener, and this is called affective meaning.

Reflected meaning; this also is the type of meaning whereby reflected meaning and collocative meaning involve interconnection. At lexical level reflected meaning arises when a word has more than one conceptual meaning or multiple conceptual meaning.

Leech continues to argue that in church service “the comforter and the Holy Ghost” refers to the third in trinity. They are religious words but unconsciously there is a response to their nonreligious meaning too. Thus a Ghost is more frequent and familiar in no religious sense. So reflected meaning has great importance in the study of semantics.

Collocative meaning is the meaning which a word acquires in the company of certain words. Collocative meaning refers to the association of a word because of its usual or habitual co-occurrence with certain types of words. For example “pretty and handsome” indicate good looking; however they slightly differ from each other because of collocation or co-occurrence. The word “pretty” locates with girls, woman, village, gardens, and flowers but on the other hand the word “handsome” collocates with boys, men and so on. Collocative meaning need to be evoked only when other categories of meaning don’t apply. Generalization can be made in case of other meanings while coollocative is simply on idiosyncratic property of individual words. So collocative meaning has its importance and it is a marginal kind of category.

The last type of meaning is themantic meaning; this meaning refers to what is communicated by the way in which a speaker or a writer organizes the message in terms of ordering focus and emphasis.

Thus active is different from passive though its conceptual meaning is the same, so themantic meaning helps us to understand the message and its applications properly. For example the following statements in active and passive voice have the same conceptual meaning but different communicative values, for example:

Mrs. Smith donated the first prize

The first prize was donated 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 change the meaning also. So the way we order our message also convey what is important and what not, this is basically themantic meaning.

So we need to know that meaning plays a virtual role in understanding what is communicated, then according to this scholar there are seven types of meaning and they contributed much to the field of semantics, the study of meaning is the new field of this country, in days to come, this field of study will progress and will have much value in analysis of meaning in field of linguistics.

In order to understand better the meaning of meaning let us see the different theories concerning the meaning of meaning and how this theory contributed much in the understanding of the term meaning of meaning.

According to Richards coined the meaning of meaning theory was the study of misunderstanding and its remedies (Griffen, 1997:57). This new rhetoric focused on understanding rather than persuasion which is what most of the old rhetoric focused on. He felt that understanding is the main goal of communication and communication problems result from misunderstanding and this information that was lost during a conversation was due to people’s language.

One of the ideas of meaning of meaning theory is the “proper meaning superstition”. Richards says that the proper meaning superstition is false because words mean different thing to different people in different situations. So this misunderstanding can cause confusion because people think that they are talking about the same thing but really they are not.

Another theory is that the idea of signs is something that we directly encounter, but at the same time it refers to something else (Griffen, 1997:58) example the sign or word of smoke is a sign of a fire. And we mean that words are a different kind of sign called a symbol. Symbols have no natural connection with the things that they described (Griffen,1997: 58).

The only reason that words are symbols of something is because they have been given meaning thus may cause problems when people are communicating using arbitrary words that do not have an exact meaning.

The meaning of meaning theory, this theory main idea is that meanings don’t reside in words, they reside in people. Understanding that meaning comes from individual, people can help to clear up confusion and prevent arguments when communicating with others since people interpret words and phrases differently.

The meaning of meaning theory has both scientific and human perspectives. Richards puts the theory into words and concepts that are easy to understand this theory has practical application in our daily life because it shows us ways to clear us misunderstandings that communication confusion may have created, so this theory it gives us the solutions for ways to fix the problem.

Richards theory has a lot of good ideas to take away from it. He reminds us that meaning do not reside in words, they reside in people (Ogden, 1923:247). Although we must bring other aspects such as non verbal and the reason that people say, what they say into consideration.

Not only the good idea of this theory but also there is the problem with this theory that simply understanding meaning does not give the whole understanding of the word unless it is in context.

Looking at the definition of meaning of meaning, types of meaning and also the theory of meaning, it is suggested that meaning of meaning is not reside in words but they reside in people’s mind. Thus means the meaning of something can be explained on how the person has been understood according to the situation or certain area.

                           BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Bloom field, L (1970) Philosophical Aspects of Language, Indian University Press, India.

Griffen, E. M (1997) A First Look at Communication Theory, McGraw-Hill Companies Inc; New York.

Jindal, P. S. (2011) Introduction to Linguistics, Oxford University Press, New York.

Leech, G and Startvik, J. A (1975) A Communicative Grammar of English, Longman Group Ltd, London.

Leech, G et al (2004) A Communication Grammar of English Person Education; Singapore, ple Ltd.

Ogden, C. K (1923) The Meaning of Meaning, Harcourt Brace and World Inc, New York.

Richard, A and Ogden, K. C (1989) The Meaning of Meaning Harvest/hes, New York.

Www. Stanford.edu/group/shr/4-1/text/van brankal.commentary-html.