Meaning
Lone Albrecht
ASB
Words
Sense, reference & Denotation
Two sense-relations: Antonomy & Hyponymy
Polysemy & Synonymy
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Sense relations
Antonymy
Gradable:
Wide – narrow
Short – long
Complementary:
Married – single
Husband – wife
Boy – girl
Summer – winter
Reversed:
Buy – sell
Married – divorced
Live - die
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Another sense relation
Hyponymy:
Superordinate
Hyponym
Sheep
ram ewe lamb
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Reference
Situational Textual
Exophora endophora
To preceding text:
anaphora To following text:
cataphora
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Denotation
Refers to the objective meaning of a word in
general:
’dog’ denotes a class of entities belonging
to a class denoted ’animal’
’the dog’ denotes a specific dog or to the
species
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Polysemy
Multiple meaning – a property of single words:
Head top part of body
top of nail
manager
intellect
promontory
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Synonymy
Identical meaning??
Kingly / Royal / Regal
Brotherly / Fraternal
Buy / Purchase
World / Universe
Fall / Autumn
Statesman / Politician
Thrifty / Economical / Stingy
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Criterial and non-criterial Aspects of Meaning
Woman
Criterial
+ human
- male
+ adult
Non-criterial
Physical: biped
having a womb
Psychological: social
gregarious
subject to maternal instincts
Typical: capable of speech
experienced in cookery
skirt-or-dress-wearing
etc.
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Denotative vs Connotative Meaning
Denotation:
Basic, cognitive meaning of a word. Direct reference to thing,
person, place, property, process, activity without extraneous,
emotive association
Connotation:
The attitudes, feelings and emotions aroused by the word,
added to the denotational meaning of the word. The
connotational meaning may be more important than the
denotational meaning
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Denotative and Connotative
Lexical Items
Predominantly Context-bound Predominantly
denotative: denotative or connotative:
connotative:
Sodium chloride Salt Terrible
Converter Bird Tyranny
Steel melting furnaces Crow Butterfingers
Telephone Etc. Etc.
directory
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Reflected Meaning
What is communicated through association with another sense of the
same expression
Taboo meaning - often words associated with sex and other physiological
functions – I hardly need mention any!
The Holy Ghost, The Comforter
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EMOTIVE MEANING
What is communicated of the feelings and
attitudes of the speaker/writer
Most often referred to as expressive meaning
(in Jakobson’s model of language functions).
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Thematic Meaning
What is communicated by the way in which the message is organized in
terms of order and emphasis
Mrs Bessie Smith donated the first prize
The first prize was donated by Mrs Bessie Smith
A man is waiting in the hall
There’s a man waiting in the hall
They stopped at the end of the corridor
At the end of the corridor, they stopped
Position
Usual vs. Unusual (frequency of structure)
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words,
Central London Hatchery And Conditioning Centre, and in a shield, the World State’s
motto COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.
The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the
summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thn light
glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, som pallid shape
of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining
porcelain of the laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the
workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was
frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a
certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after
luscious streak in long recession down the work tables.
"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."
http://www.huxley.net/bnw/index.html
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
by
Aldous Huxley
(1894-1963)
Chapter One
A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON
HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY,
IDENTITY, STABILITY.
The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes,
for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking
some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel
and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the
workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a
ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying
along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables.
"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."
Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and
Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or
whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed
nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director's heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever the
great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horse's mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D.
H. C. for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various
departments.
"Just to give you a general idea," he would explain to them. For of course some sort of general idea they
must have, if they were to do their work intelligently–though as little of one, if they were to be good and
happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness;
generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors
compose the backbone of society.
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