Lecture 1 & 2

Handouts on Semantics & Pragmatics

(E-Learning Sessions) Semester: Spring 2020

The word semantic (from French sémantique) was invented by Michel Bréal during the

19th century.

What is pragmatics?

A Definition of Pragmatics

 the study of the practical aspects of human action and thought.

 the study of the use of linguistic signs, words and sentences, in actual
situations.[1]
Pragmatics outlines the study of meaning in the interactional context

It looks beyond the literal meaning of an utterance and considers how meaning is
constructed as well as focusing on implied meanings. It considers language as an
instrument of interaction, what people mean when they use language and how we
communicate and understand each other.

Jenny Thomas says that pragmatics considers:

 the negotiation of meaning between speaker and listener.

 the context of the utterance.
 the meaning potential of an utterance.

An example of ‘Crack the window’ may mean to close the window pragmatically but
semantically it might convey the meaning to break or crush the window into pieces.

Seven Types of Meaning

A piece of language conveys its dictionary meaning, connotations beyond the

dictionary meaning, information about the social context of language use, speaker’s
feelings and attitudes rubbing off of one meaning on the another meaning of the same
word when it has two meanings and meaning because of habit occurrence.

Broadly speaking, ‘meaning’ means the sum total of communicated through language.
Words, Phrases and sentences have meanings which are studies in semantics.

Geoffrey Leech in his ‘Semantic- A Study of meaning’ (1974) breaks down meaning

into seven types or ingredients giving primacy to conceptual meaning.

The Seven types of meaning according to Leech are as follows.

1) Conceptual or Denotative Meaning:

Conceptual meaning is also called logical or cognitive meaning. It is the basic

propositional meaning which corresponds to the primary dictionary definition. Such a
meaning is stylistically neutral and objective as opposed to other kinds of associative
meanings. Conceptual
Meanings are the essential or core meaning while other six types are the peripheral. It
is peripheral in as sense that it is non-essential. They are stylistically marked and
subjective kind of meanings. Leech gives primacy to conceptual meaning because it
has sophisticated organization based on the principle of contrastiveness and
hierarchical structure.

E.g.

/P/ can be described as- voiceless + bilabial + plosive.

Similarly

Boy = + human + male-adult.

The hierarchical structure of ‘Boy’ = + Human + Male-Adult

Or “Boy” =Human – Male/Female-adult in a rough way.

Conceptual meaning is the literal meaning of the word indicating the idea or concept
to which it refers. The concept is minimal unit of meaning which could be called
‘sememe’. As we define phoneme on the basis of binary contrast, similarly we can
define sememe ‘Woman’ as = + human + female + adult. If any of these attribute
changes the concept cease to be the same.

Conceptual meaning deals with the core meaning of expression. It is the denotative or
literal meaning. It is essential for the functioning of language. For example, a part of
the conceptual meaning of ‘Needle” may be “thin”, “sharp” or “instrument”.

The organization of conceptual meaning is based on two structural principles-

Contrastiveness and the principle of structure. The conceptual meanings can be
studied typically in terms of contrastive features.

For example the word “woman” can be shown as:

“Woman = + Human, -Male, + Adult”.

On the contrary, word

“Boy” can be realized as:-

“Boy = “+ human, + male, - Adult”.

By the principle of structure, larger units of language are built up out smaller units or
smaller units or smaller units are built out larger ones.

The aim of conceptual meaning is to provide an appropriate semantic representation

to a sentence or statement. A sentence is made of abstract symbols. Conceptual
meaning helps us to distinguish one meaning from the meaning of other sentences.
Thus, conceptual meaning is an essential part of language. A language essentially
depends on conceptual meaning for communication. The conceptual meaning is the
base for all the other types of meaning.

2) Connotative Meaning:

Connotative meaning is the communicative value of an expression over and above its
purely conceptual content. It is something that goes beyond mere referent of a word
and hints at its attributes in the real world. It is something more than the dictionary
meaning. Thus purely conceptual content of ‘woman’ is +human + female+ adult but
the psychosocial connotations could be ‘gregarious’, ‘having maternal instinct’ or
typical (rather than invariable) attributes of womanhood such as ‘babbling’,’
experienced in cookery’, ‘skirt or dress wearing ‘etc. Still further connotative meaning
can embrace putative properties of a referent due to viewpoint adopted by individual,
group, and society as a whole. So in the past woman was supposed to have attributes
like frail, prone to tears, emotional, irrigational, inconstant , cowardly etc. as well as
more positive qualities such gentle, sensitive, compassionate, hardworking etc.
Connotations vary age to age and society to society.

E.g. Old age ‘Woman’ - ‘Non-trouser wearing or sari wearing’ in Indian context must
have seemed definite connotation in the past.

Present ‘Woman’---- Shalwar/T-shirt/Jeans wearing.

Some times connotation varies from person to person also

E.g. connotations of the word ‘woman’ for misogynist and a person of feminist vary.

The boundary between conceptual and connotative seems to be analogous.

Connotative meaning is regarded as incidental, comparatively unstable, in
determinant, open ended, variable according to age, culture and individual, whereas
conceptual meaning is not like that . It can be codified in terms of limited symbols.

3) Social or socio-stylistic Meaning:

The meaning conveyed by the piece of language about the social context of its use is
called the social meaning. The decoding 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. Social meaning is related to the situation in which an utterance is used.

It is concerned with the social circumstances of the use of a linguistic expression. For
example, some dialectic words inform us about the regional and social background of
the speaker. In the same way, some stylistic usages let us know something of the
social relationship between the speaker and the hearer

E.g. “I ain’t done nothing”

He hasn’t not come.

The line tells us about the speaker and that is the speaker is probably a black
American/African, 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 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. The word ‘Home’ can have many
use also like domicile ( official), residence (formal) abode (poetic) , home (ordinary
use).

Stylistic variation is also found in sentence. For example, two criminals will express
the following sentence

“They chucked the stones at the cops and then did a bunk with the look”
(Criminals after the event)

But the same ideas will be revealed by the chief inspector to his officials by the
following sentence.

“After casting the stones at the police, they abandoned with money.”

(Chief Inspector in an official report)

Thus through utterances we come to know about the social facts, social situation,
class, region, and speaker-listener relations by its style and dialect used in sentences.

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, the sentence,

“I haven’t got a knife” has the common meaning in isolation. But the sentence uttered
to waiter mean a request for a knife’

Thus we can understand that the connotative meaning plays a very vital role in the
field of semantics and in understanding the utterances and sentences in different
context.

4) Affective or Emotive Meaning:

For some linguists it refers to emotive association or effects of words evoked in the
reader, listener. It is what is conveyed about the personal feelings or attitude towards
the listener.

E.g. ‘home’ for a sailor/soldier or expatriate

and ‘mother’ for a motherless child, a married woman (esp. in Indian context) will
have special effective, emotive quality.

In affective meaning, language is used to express personal feelings or attitude to the

listener or to the subject matter of his discourse.

For Leech affective meaning refers to what is convey about the feeling and attitude of
the speak through use of language (attitude to listener as well as attitude to what he
is saying). Affective meaning is often conveyed through conceptual, connotative
content of the words used

E.g. “you are a vicious tyrant and a villainous reprobation and I hate you”

Or “I hate you, you idiot”.

We are left with a little doubt about the speaker’s feelings towards the listener. Here
speaker seems to have a very negative attitude towards his listener. This is called
affective meaning.

But very often we are more discreet (cautious) and convey our attitude indirectly.

E.g. “I am terribly sorry but if you would be so kind as to lower your voice a

little”

. Conveys our irritation in a scaled down manner for the sake of politeness. Intonation
and voice quality are also important here. Thus the sentence above can be uttered in
biting sarcasm and the impression of politeness maybe reversed while –
e.g.

“Will you belt up?”- can be turned into a playful remark between intimates if said with
the intonation of a request.

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.

5) Reflected Meaning:

Reflected meaning and collocative meaning involve interconnection

At the lexical level of language, Reflected meaning arises when a word has more than
one conceptual meaning or multiple conceptual meaning. In such cases while
responding to one sense of the word we partly respond to another sense of the word
too. Leech says that in church service ‘the comforter and the Holy Ghost ’refer to the
third in Trinity. They are religious words. But unconsciously there is a response to
their non-religious meanings too. Thus the ‘comforter’ sounds warm and comforting
while the ‘Ghost’ sounds ‘awesome’ or even ‘dreadful’. One sense of the word seems
to rub off on another especially through relative frequency and familiarity (e.g. a
ghost is more frequent and familiar in no religious sense.).

In poetry too we have reflected meaning as in the following lines from ‘Futility’

‘Are limbs so dear achieved, are sides,

Full nerved still warm-too hard to stir’

Owen here uses ‘dear’ in the sense of expensiveness. - But the sense of beloved is also
eluded.

E.g. Daffodils

“The could not but be gay

In such jocund company”

The word ‘gay’ was frequently used in the time of William Wordsworth but the word
now is used for ‘homosexuality’.

In such type cases of multiple meaning, one meaning of the word pushes the other
meaning to the background. Then the dominant suggestive power of that word
prevails. This may happen because of the relative frequency or familiarity of the
dominant meaning. This dominant meaning which pushes the other meaning at the
background is called the reflected meaning.

The word ‘intercourse’ immediately reminds us of something really negative. The

sexual association of the word drives away its innocent sense, i.e. ‘communication’.
The taboo sense of the word is so dominant that its non-taboo sense almost dies out.
In some cases, the speaker avoids the taboo words and uses their alternative word in
order to avoid the unwanted reflected meaning. For example, as Bloomfield has
pointed out, the word ‘Cock’ is replaced by speakers, they use the word ‘rooster’ to
indicate the general meaning of the word and avoid its taboo sense. These words have
non-sexual meanings too. (E.g. erection of a building, ejaculate-throw out somebody)
but because of their frequency in the lit of the physiology of sex it is becoming difficult
to use them in their innocent/nonsexual sense.

Thus we can see that reflected meaning has great importance in the study of
semantics.

6) Collocative Meaning:

Collocative meaning is the meaning which a word acquires in the company of certain
words. Words collocate or co-occur with certain words only e.g. Big business not large
or great. Collocative meaning refers to associations of a word because of its usual or
habitual co-occurrence with certain types of
words. ‘Pretty’ and ‘handsome’ indicate ‘good looking’.

However, they slightly differ from each other because of collocation or co-occurrence.
The word ‘pretty’ collocates with – girls, woman, village, gardens, flowers, etc.

On the other hand, the word ‘handsome’ collocates with – ‘boys’ men, etc. so ‘pretty
woman’ and ‘handsome man’. While different kinds of attractiveness, hence
‘handsome woman’ may mean attractive but in a mannish way. The
verbs ‘wander’ and ‘stroll’ are quasi-synonymous- they may have almost the same
meaning but while ‘cows may wonder into another farm’, they don’t stroll into that
farm because ‘stroll’ collocates with human subject only. Similarly one ‘trembles with
fear’ but ‘quivers with excitement’. Collocative meanings need to be invoked only
when other categories of meaning don’t apply. Generalizations can be made in case of
other meanings while collocative meaning is simply on idiosyncratic property of
individual words. Collocative meaning has its importance and it is a marginal kind of
category.

7) Thematic Meaning:

It 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. Various parts of the sentence also
can be used as subject, object or complement to show prominence. It is done through
focus, theme (topic) or emotive emphasis. Thematic meaning helps us to understand
the message and its implications properly. For example, the following statements in
active and passive voice have same conceptual meaning but different communicative
values.

e.g.

1) Mrs. Smith donated the first prize

2) 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.

The first suggests that we already know Mrs. Smith (perhaps through earlier mention)
its known/given information while it’s new information.

Alternative grammatical construction also gives thematic meaning. For example,

1) He likes Pakistanis goods the most.

2) Pakistanis goods he likes the most

3) It is the Pakistani goods he likes the most.

Like the grammatical structures, stress and intonation also make the message
prominent. For example, the contrastive stress on the word ‘cotton’ in the following
sentence give prominence to the information

Saleem wears a cotton shirt

The kind of shirt that Saleem wears is cotton one.

Thus sentences or pairs of sentences with similar conceptual meaning differ their
communicative value. This is due to different grammatical constructions or lexical
items or stress and intonations. Therefore they are used in different contents.

“Ten thousand saw I at a glance”

Wordsworth here inverts the structure to focus on ‘ten thousand”

Sometimes thematic contrast i.e. contrasts between given and new information can be
conveyed by lexical means.
e.g.
1) John owns the biggest shop in London
2) The biggest shop in London belongs to John.
The ways we order our message also convey what is important and what not. This is
basically thematic meaning.

Associative Meaning:
Leech uses this as an umbrella term for the remaining 5 types of
meanings( connotative, social, affective, reflective and collocative).All these have
more in common with connotative than conceptual meaning. They all have the same
open ended, variable character and can be analyzed in terms of scales or ranges
( more/less) than in either or contrastive terms. These meanings contain many
imponderable factors. But conceptual meaning is stable
Summary of Seven Types of Meaning.
1. Conceptual Meaning = Logical, cognitive or denotative meaning.
2. Connotative Meaning = What is communicated by virtue of what language
refers
3. Social Meaning = What is communicated of the social circumstances of
Language
4. Affective Meaning = What is communicated of the feelings and attitudes of
the Speaker through language.
5. Reflected Meaning = What is communicated through associations with
another Sense of the same world.
6. Collocative Meaning = What is communicated through associations with
words which co-occur with another word.
7. Thematic Meaning = What is communicated by the way in which the
message is organized in terms of order and emphasis.
Conclusion:
Study of meaning, one of the major areas of linguistic study. Linguists have approached it in a
variety of ways. Members of the school of interpretive semantics study the structures of
language independent of their conditions of use. In contrast, the advocates of generative
semantics insist that the meaning of sentences is a function of their use. Still another group
maintains that semantics will not advance until theorists take into account the psychological
questions of how people form concepts and how these relate to word meanings.