TYPES OF MEANING by GEOFFREY LEECH

Semantics Assignment

Indah Mustika Santhi (180410070001)

Novita Indah Permata Sari (180410070005)
Carisya Nuramadea (180410070041)

Class : Lx1
 DEPARTEMEN PENDIDIKAN NASIONAL
JURUSAN SASTRA INGGRIS
FAKULTAS SASTRA
UNIVERSITAS PADJADJARAN
JATINANGOR
2010

I. Introduction

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.

II. Content
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.
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. 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,
 He likes Indian good most.
Indian goods he likes most
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.

III. 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.
 Bibliografy
http://universeofenglish.blogspot.com/2009/02/seven-types-of-meaning-in-
semantics.html
Paul Cobley, 1993, The Cambridge Companion to Semiotics and Linguistics.
Routledge