In linguistics, meaning is the information
or concepts that a sender intends to convey,
or does convey, in communication with a receiver.
== The sources of ambiguity ==
Ambiguity means confusion about what is conveyed,
since the current context may lead to different
interpretations of meaning. Many words in
many languages have multiple definitions.
Ambiguity is an effect of a rupture of the
rule of identity in the context of the exchange
of information. Particularly the sender may
be physically absent, and the contexts explicitly
divergent, such as will be the case when the
receptor is a reader and the sender was a
writer.
=== Pragmatics ===
Pragmatics is the study of how context affects
meaning. The two primary forms of context
important to pragmatics are linguistic context
and situation context.
Linguistic context is how meaning is understood
without relying on intent and assumptions.
In applied pragmatics, for example, meaning
is formed through sensory experiences, even
though sensory stimulus cannot be easily articulated
in language or signs. Pragmatics, then, reveals
that meaning is both something affected by
and affecting the world. Meaning is something
contextual with respect to language and the
world, and is also something active toward
other meanings and the world. Linguistic context
becomes important when looking at particular
linguistic problems such as that of pronouns.
Situation context refers to every non-linguistic
factor that affects the meaning of a phrase.
An example of situation context can be seen
in the phrase "it's cold in here", which can
either be a simple statement of fact or a
request to turn up the heat, depending on,
among other things, whether or not it is believed
to be in the listener's power to affect the
temperature.
=== Semantic meaning ===
The relationship between words and their referents
is called semantic. Semantics is the study
of how meaning is conveyed through signs and
language. Understanding how facial expressions,
body language, and tone affect meaning, and
how words, phrases, sentences, and punctuation
relate to meaning are examples. Various subgroups
of semantics are studied within the fields
of linguistics, logic and computing. For example,
linguistic semantics includes the history
of how words have been used in the past; logical
semantics includes how people mean and refer
in terms of likely intent and assumptions.
During the 19th century, John Stuart Mill
defined semantic meaning with the words "denotation"
and "connotation". A denotation is the literal
or primary meaning of a word. Connotations
are ideas or feelings that a word invokes
for a person in addition to its literal or
primary meaning.
The original use of "meaning" as understood
early in the 20th century occurred through
Lady Welby, after her daughter translated
the term "semantics" from French.
=== Conceptual meaning ===
Languages allow information to be conveyed
even when the specific words used are not
known by the reader or listener. People connect
words with meaning and use words to refer
to concepts. A person's intentions affect
what is meant. Meaning (in English) as intent
harkens back to the Anglo-Saxons and is associated
today still, with the German verb meinen as
to think or intend.
== Semiotics ==
Ferdinand de Saussure, in founding semiology,
his original subset of the semiotics, started
describing language in terms of Signs, dividing
those signs in turn into signifieds and signifiers.
The signifier is the perceptive side of a
sign, thus the sound form in case of oral
language. The signified is the signification
(semantic) side, the mental construction or
image associated with the sound, by either
a speaker and hearer. A sign, then, is essentially
a relationship between signified and signifier.
Signs are essentially conventional, as any
foreign language student is well aware: there
is no reason that bat couldn't mean "body
of water" or even "that bust of Napoleon over
there". Since the choice of signifiers is
ultimately arbitrary, the meaning cannot somehow
be in the signifier. Saussure instead defers
meaning to the sign itself: meaning is ultimately
the same thing as the sign, and meaning means
that relationship is between signified and
signifier. All meaning is both within us and
communal, thus cultural. Signs "mean" by reference
to our internal lexicon and grammar, and despite
there being a matter of convention, so the
communal part, signs also, because of the
individual's uniqueness, can mean something
only to the individual (what red means to
one person may not be what red means to another,
either in absolute value, or by including
what's suggested by the context). However,
while meanings carried by one given set of
signifiers may vary to some extent from individual
to individual, only those meanings that stay
within a boundary are seen by other speakers
of the language to belong to the language:
if one were to refer to smells as red, most
other speakers would assume the person is
talking nonsense (although statements like
this are common among people who experience
synesthesia, or in poetry).
== See also ==
FieldsGeneral semantics
Semiotics
PragmaticsPerspectivesLogical positivism
Ordinary language philosophy
Sense and referenceTheoriesCausal theory of
names
Definite descriptions
Theory of descriptions
Universal grammarConsiderationsIdeasthesia
Idea
Image
Information
Meaning (non-linguistic)
Metaphor
Sense
Symbol
Symbol grounding
SphoṭaImportant theoristsJ. L. Austin
Roland Barthes
Rudolf Carnap
Noam Chomsky
Eugenio Coseriu
Umberto Eco
Viktor Frankl
Gottlob Frege
Edmund Husserl
Paul Grice
Roman Jakobson
Saul Kripke
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Charles Sanders Peirce
Bertrand Russell
Ferdinand de Saussure
John Searle
P. F. Strawson
Willard Van Orman Quine
Ludwig Wittgenstein
