Seven Types of Meaning in Semantics

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’---- Salwar/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 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”

The line tells us about the speaker and that is the speaker is probably a
black American, underprivileged and uneducated. Another example can
be

“Come on yaar, be a sport. Don’t be Lallu”

The social meaning can be that of Indian young close friends.

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.
Reflected meaning is also found in taboo words. For examples are terms
like erection, intercourse, ejaculation. The
word ‘intercourse’ immediately reminds us of its association with sex
(sexual intercourse). 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 Indian good most.

2) Indian goods he likes most

3) It is the Indian goods he likes 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

1. John wears a cotton shirt

2. The kind of shirt that john 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 connotative content.

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.

In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of

meaning, as borne on the syntactic levels of words, phrases, sentences,
and even larger units of discourse (referred to as texts). As with
any empirical science, semantics involves the interplay of concrete data
with theoretical concepts. Traditionally, semantics has included the
study of connotative sense and denotative reference, truth
conditions, argument structure, thematic roles, discourse analysis, and
the linkage of all of these to syntax.

According to Leech there are only seven types of meaning. Meaning

plays a vital role in understanding what is communicated. Thus, there
are seven types of meaning and they contributed much to the field of
semantics. The study of meaning is a new field of this century, in days to
come; this field of study will progress and will have much value in
analysis of meaning in field of linguistics.