26 Semantics and its Relationship with Pragmatics

Mr. Mamud Hasan

About the chapter

This module deals with two important aspects of linguistics i.e. Semantics and Pragmatics. It covers various aspects and varieties of semantics and pragmatics. Language meaning can be analysed at several levels. It has a direct connection with semantics and pragmatics. The study has also presented the study of meaning in various contexts. The module has tried to come up with the relationship between semantics and pragmatics and some basic differences between the two.

Definition of Semantics

Semantics is one of the important branches of linguistics that deals with interpretation and meaning of the words, sentence structure and symbols, while determining the reading comprehension of the readers how they understand others and their interpretations. In addition, semantics construct a relation between adjoining words and clarifies the sense of a sentence whether the meanings of words are literal or figurative.

Semantics is a branch of linguistics, which is the study of language; it is an area of study interacting with those of syntax and phonology. A person’s linguistic abilities are based on knowledge that they have. One of the insights of modern linguistics is that speakers of a language have different types of linguistic knowledge, including how to pronounce words, how to construct sentences, and about the meaning of individual words and sentences. To reflect this, linguistic description has different levels of analysis. So – phonology is the study of what sounds combine to form words; syntax is the study of how words can be combined into sentences; and semantics is the study of the meanings of words and sentences.

William Frawley defines linguistic semantics as “the study of literal, decontextualized, grammatical meaning”. Semantics is concerned with the conceptual meaning related to words. Semantics does not focus on the context, rather it deals with the meaning according to grammar and vocabulary. The focus is only on the general rules used for a language.

Types of Semantic

There are two types of Semantics:

Connotative Semantic

When a word suggests a set of associations, or it is an imaginative or emotional suggestion connected with the words, while readers can relate to such associations. Simply, it represents figurative meaning. Usually poets use this type of meaning in their poetry.

Denotative Semantic

It suggests the literal, explicit or dictionary meanings of the words without using associated meanings. It also uses symbols in writing that suggest expressions of writers such as an exclamation mark, quotation mark, apostrophe, colon, and quotation mark etc.

Function of Semantic

The purpose of semantic is to propose exact meanings of the words and phrases and remove confusion, which might lead the readers to believe a word has many possible meanings. It makes a relationship between a word and the sentence through their meanings. Besides, semantic enables the readers to explore a sense of the meaning, because if we remove or change the place of a single word from the sentence, it will change the entire meanings, or else the sentence will become anomalous. Hence, the sense relation inside a sentence is very important, as a single word does not carry any sense or meaning.

Miriam Webstar Dictionary defines Semantics as – “the study of meanings, the historical and psychological study and the classification of changes in the signification of words or forms viewed as factors in linguistic development.”

Study of Meaning

A word is the smallest unit of spoken language which has meaning and can stand alone, it is a written representation of one or more sounds which can be spoken to represent an idea, object, action, etc. in order to be understood by the people, a word must have a meaning. Most words have more than one meaning, it is the characteristic of words that a single word may have several meaning, in fact, words may play an enormous part in our life. Words are used to express something and also convey feelings about we are describing. Words are used not in isolation but related to human situation. It is through our experience with them in situation that they take on meaning. If we talk about words, we can not avoid talking about the study of meaning (semantics). The meaning of word is often complex, having such component as a picture, an idea, a quality, a relationship and personal feelings and association.

The seven types of meaning are as follows:

Conceptual Meaning.

Conceptual meaning is sometimes called denotative meaning or cognitive meaning, it is widely assumed to be the central factor in linguistic communication. Larson noted that denotative meaning is also called as primary meaning, that is the meaning suggested by the word when it used alone. It is the first meaning or usage which a word will suggest to most people when the word is said in isolation. It is the meaning learned early in life and likely to have reference to a physical situation.

It is said that the aim of denotative meaning is to provide, for any given interpretation of a sentence, a configuration of abstract symbols, which shows exactly what we need to know if we are to distinguish that meaning from all other possible sentence meaning in the language.

It has a complex and sophisticated organization compared to those specific to syntactic or phonological levels of language. The principles of contrastiveness and constituent structure – paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes of linguistic structure- manifest at this level i. e. conceptual meaning can be studied in terms of contrastive features.

Connotative Meaning.

As we experience, words are human situations, they not only take on certain denotation, but also often acquire individual flavours. They have come to have emotive tone, the associations, and suggestiveness of the situation in which they have been a part. For example the words ‘brink’, this denotes on “edge”. However in the phrase “The brink of the cliff” or” the brink of disaster”, this word suggests danger and its emotive tone is that of fear.

Connotative meaning is the communicative value with an expression of what it refers to. To a large extent, the notion of reference overlaps with conceptual meaning. The contrastive features become attributes of the referent, including not only physical characteristics, but also psychological and social properties, typical rather than invariable. Connotations are apt to vary from age to age, from society to society.

Connotative meaning is peripheral compared to conceptual meaning, because connotations are relatively unstable. They vary according to cultural, historical period, experience of the individual. Connotative meaning is indeterminate and open- ended that is any characteristic of the referent, identified subjectively or objectively may contribute to the connotative meaning.

Stylistic Meaning.

Stylistic meaning is that which a piece of language conveys about the circumstances of its use. A recent account of English has recognized some main dimensions of stylistic variation. For instance:

1. They chucked a stone at the cops, and then did a bunk with the loot.

2. After casting a stone at the police, they absconded with the money.

Sentence (1) could be said by the two criminals, talking casually about the crime afterwards; sentence (2) might be said by the chief of the police in making the official report; both could describe the same happening (Leech, 1974: 15)

Affective Meaning

Affective meaning is a sort of meaning which affect the personal feeling of the speakers, including his/her attitude to the listener, or his/her attitude to something he/she talking about. For example-

(1) ”I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but I wonder if you would be so kind as to lower your voice as a little” or

(2) “Will you belt up”.

Factors such as intonation and voice timbre are also important here. The impression of politeness in the sentence (1) can be reserved by tone of biting sarcasm; sentence (2) can be turn into a playful remark between intimates if delivered with the intonation of a mild request.

In considering the pragmatic dimension of meaning, we can distinguish between social and affective meaning. Social meaning is that which a piece of language conveys about the social circumstances of its use. In part, we ‘decode’ the social meaning of a text through our recognition of different dimensions and levels of style.

One account (Crystal and Davy, Investigating English Style) has recognized several dimensions of socio-linguistic variation. There are variations according to:

– dialect i. e. the language of a geographical region or of a social class;

– time , for instance the language of the eighteenth century;

– province/domain I. e. the language of law, science, etc.;

– status i. e. polite/ colloquial language etc.;

– modality i. e. the language of memoranda, lectures, jokes, etc.;

– singurality, for instance the language of a writer.

It’s not surprising that we rarely find words which have both the same conceptual and stylistic meaning, and this led to declare that there are no ‘true synonyms’. But there is much convenience in restricting the term ‘synonymy’ to equivalence of conceptual meaning. For example, domicile is very formal, official, residence is formal, abode is poetic, home is the most general term.

The way language reflects the personal feelings of the speaker, his/ her attitude towards his/ her interlocutor or towards the topic of discussion, represents affective meaning. Scaling our remarks according to politeness, intonation and voice- timbre are essential factors in expressing affective meaning which is largely a parasitic category, because it relies on the mediation of conceptual, connotative or stylistic meanings. The exception is when we use interjections whose chief function is to express emotion.

Reflected Meaning

Reflected meaning involves an interconnection on the lexical level of language, it is the meaning, which arises in case of multiple conceptual meaning, when one sense of word forms part of our response to another sense. For instance, on hearing the Church service, the synonymous expressions The Comforter and The Holy Ghost both refer to the Third Trinity, but the Comforter sounds warm and comforting, while the Holy Ghost sounds awesome.

Collocative Meaning

Collocative meaning consists of the associations a word acquires on account of the meanings of the words, which tends to occur in its environment. For instance the words pretty and handsome share common ground in the meaning of good looking. But may be distinguished by the range of noun in which they are like to occur or collocate; Pretty woman and handsome man. The ranges may well match although they suggest a different kind of attractiveness of the adjectives.

Collocative meaning remains an idiosyncratic property of individual words and it shouldn’t be invoked to explain all differences of potential co- occurrence. Affective and social meaning, reflected and collocative meaning have more in common with connotative meaning than with conceptual meaning; they all have the same open- ended, variable character and lend themselves to analysis in terms of scales and ranges. They can be all brought together under the heading of associative meaning. Associative meaning needs employing an elementary ‘associationist’ theory of mental connections based upon contiguities of experience in order to explain it. Whereas conceptual meaning requires the postulation of intricate mental structures specific to language and to humans, and is part of the ‘common system‘ of language shared by members of a speech community, associative meaning is less stable and varies with the individual’s experience. Because of so many imponderable factors involved in it, associative meaning can be studied systematically only by approximative statistical techniques. Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum (The Measurement of Meaning, 1957), proposed a method for a partial analysis of associative meaning. They devised a technique – involving a statistical measurement device, – The Semantic Differential -, for plotting meaning in terms of a multidimensional semantic space, using as data speaker’s judgements recorded in terms of seven point scales.

Thematic Meaning

This is the final category of meaning, thematic meaning is the meaning that is communicated by the way in which the speaker or writer organizes the message, in terms of ordering, focus, and emphasis. It is often felt an active sentence such as (1) below has a different meaning from its passive equivalent (2) although in conceptual content they seem to be the same

Mrs. Bessie Smith donated the first prize.
The first prize was donated by Mrs. Bessie Smith

We can assume that the active sentence answers an implicit question “what did Mrs. Bessie Smith donate?”, while the passive sentence answer the implicit question “who donates the first prize?”, that in other words (1) in contrast to se (2) suggest that we know who Mrs. Bessie Smith.

Lexical Relations and Semantics

This section would analyse the sematics in terms of lexical relations. It explains the meaning in terms of the relationship with other words and phrases.

Synonymy
Antonymy
Hyponymy
Prototype
Homophones and Homonyms
Polysemy

Synonymy

Here words that have the same meanings or that are closely related in meaning. Sameness‘ is not ‘total sameness‘- only one word would be appropriate in a sentence.

E.g. Sandy only had one answer correct on the test. (but NOT reply)

Example- answer/reply

almost/nearly
broad/wide
buy/purchase
freedom/ liberty

Antonymy

Here words that are opposites in meaning, e.g. hot & cold

Example- happy/sad

married/single
present/absent
ast/slow

Hyponymy

Words whose meanings are specific instances of a more general word, i.e. one thing is included (kind of) in another thing.

Example. cats and dogs are the hyponyms of the word animal.

daffodil & flower
carrot & vegetable
ant & insect

Homonymy:

A word which has two or more entirely distinct (unrelated) meanings, Example- bank: financial institution, or ‘of a river‘.

Bat: ‘flying creature‘ or ‘used in sports‘
Race: ‘contest of speed‘ of ‘ethnic group‘

Homophony

Different words pronounced the same but spelled differently, Example- two, to and too.

Flour and flower
Meat and meet
Right and write

Polysemy

A word which has multiple meanings related by extension, Example- bright: shining ; intelligent

‘Head‘ of the body and the person at the top of a company.
‘Foot’ of a body and of a mountain and of the bed or chair.
‘Run’ a person runs, the water runs

Metonymy

Metonymy is “a figure of speech in which an attribute or commonly associated feature is used to name or designate something.” A short definition is “part for whole.” What do you think about these sentence? A word substituted for another word with which it is closely associated.

He drank the whole bottle. (container-content)
The White House announced. (king-crown)
I gave her a hand. (whole-part)

Collocation

Collocation happen when words tend to occur with other words. Example- table/chair

Butter/bread
Salt/pepper
Hammer/ nail

Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the study of how language is used and of the effect of context on language. Pragmatics makes uses of three major communication skills like using language, changing language and following rules. Using language in context to different purposes like for greeting one uses words like “hello”. Changing language is all about the change in language which is based on the needs of a listener or situation. For example the way one tells an instruction to a child than to an elderly person. Following rules is about the rules of conversations or in storytelling like one rephrases if the listener is not able to grasp the orator.

Pragmatics plays a major role in discourse. When the speaker and the hearer share knowledge about the world, therefore, both the speaker and the hearer will make assumptions according to the shared knowledge. “Pragmatics” refers to the strategies (exploitation of shared knowledge, assumptions about communicative intent, etc.), by which language users relate the dictionary/grammar meaning of utterances to their communicative value in context. “Pragmatics” generally refers to the encoding of particular communicative functions, especially those relevant to interpersonal exchanges, in specific grammatical and lexical elements of a given language.

Several types of context:

Physical context – objects surrounding the communication, place and time of the communication, what is going on around, etc.

a. I want that book. accompanied by pointing

b. Be here at 9:00 tonight. place/time reference

Linguistic context – what has been said before in the conversation.

a. Linda came home late yesterday. She thought nobody would notice.

b. If my mom heard you talk like that, …

Social context – the social relationship of the people involved in communication.

(3) a. To the President: #Mr. President, stop bugging me and go home.

Elements of pragmatics

Pragmatics includes a wide range of topics and elements that helps verifying the working process of all its elements which they are listed below:

Entailment

While defining pragmatics, it has been observed that interpreting utterances involves a considerable amount of in elegant guess work where the hearer draws Inference from the speaker’s words to arrive at the speaker’s meaning. In this section, we will look at Entailment a relationship between two sentences where the truth of one (A) requires the truth of the other (B). For example, the sentence (A) the president was assassinated. Entails (B) The president is dead. Notice also that if (B) is false, then (A) must necessarily be false. To show entailment, we must show that (A) true forces (B) to be true and (B) false forces (A) to be false. (ibid). We will look at another kind of inference below (presuppositions).

Presuppositions

We look at presupposition another kind of inference, which is very closely linked to the working of the utterance. A presupposition is a background belief, relating to an utterance, which must be mutually known or assumed by the speaker and hearer for the utterance to be considered appropriate in context will generally remain a necessary assumption whether the utterance is placed in the form of an assertion, denial, or question, and can be associated with a specific lexical item or grammatical feature (presupposition trigger) in the utterance. In pragmatics, a presupposition is an assumption about the world whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include:

1- Do you want to do it again?

Presupposition: You have done it already, at least once.

2- My wife is pregnant.

Presupposition: The speaker has a wife.

Presuppositions are inferences that are very closely linked to the words and grammatical structures actually used in the utterance, but they come from our knowledge about the way language users conventionally interpret these words and structures. After giving definition to presupposition and giving examples to illustrates the definition. We will look at another kind of inference, it is (Implicature).

Implicature

Another subject related to pragmatics is “Implicature” which is, anything that is concluded from an utterance, but that is not a condition for the truth of the utterance. It is a technical term in the linguistic branch of pragmatics coined by Paul Grice. It describes the relationship between two statements where the truth of one suggests the truth of the other, For example, the sentence “Mary had a baby and got married” strongly suggests that Mary had the baby before the wedding, but the sentence would still be strictly true if Mary had her baby after she got married.

Further, if we add the qualification ” not necessarily in that order” to the original sentence, then the implicature is cancelled even though the meaning of the original sentence is not altered. This can be contrasted with cases of entailment. For example, the statement “The president was assassinated” not only suggests that “The president is dead” is true, but requires that it should be true. The first sentence could not be true if the second were not true; if the president were not dead, then whatever it is that happened to him would not have counted as a (successful) assassination. Similarly, unlike implicatures, entailments cannot be cancelled; there is no qualification that one could add to “The president was assassinated” which would cause it to cease entailing “The president is dead” while also preserving the meaning of the first sentence”.

Relationship between Semantics and Pragmatics

A comparison of semantics and pragmatics is a very large undertaking and a simple essay does not provide a sufficient venue for discussing all of the ideas and notions related to the many different views of semantics and pragmatics. The study presents the comparison of semantics and pragmatics from a linguist’s point of view. The two branches of linguistics, i.e. semantics and pragmatics, deal with the meaning of language and link language to the world.

Each branch deals with meaning differently; yet, many students of linguistics confuse the two terms. The only obvious similarity between the two branches is that they both deal with the meanings of words and sentences but in different ways.

Semantics and Pragmatics are branches of Linguistics. Both of them deal with the study of meaning. Semantics deals with the study of meaning of word without the context. On the other hand, Pragmatics understands the language meaning but keeping the context in mind.
Pragmatics is the study of the ability of natural language speakers to communicate more than that which is explicitly stated. The ability to understand another speaker’s intended meaning is called pragmatic competence. An utterance describing pragmatic function is described as metapragmatics. Another perspective is that pragmatics deals with the ways we reach our goal in communication. Suppose, a person wanted to ask someone else to stop smoking. This can be achieved by using several utterances. The person could simply say, ‘Stop smoking, please!’ which is direct and with clear semantic meaning; alternatively, the person could say, ‘Whew, this room could use an air purifier’ which implies a similar meaning but is indirect and therefore requires pragmatic inference to derive the intended meaning.
While Semantics concentrates on the meaning that comes from linguistic knowledge, Pragmatics concentrates on those aspects of meaning that cannot be predicted by Linguistic knowledge alone and takes into account our knowledge about the physical and the social world. The focus of pragmatic analysis is on the meaning of speakers’ utterances rather than on the meaning of words or sentences. Utterances need not consist of complete focus of pragmatic analysis is on the meaning of speakers’ utterances rather than on the meaning of words or sentences. Utterances need not consist of complete sentences. Each utterance is a unique physical event created at a particular point in time for a particular communicative purpose. In our point of view, pragmatics helps the translator or the interpreter in finding clues in the utterances the speakers make which leads him to find the appropriate equivalent in the target language.
Semantics covers what expressions mean, while pragmatics covers what speakers mean in using the expressions.
Pragmatics involves how speakers use language in contextualized social interactions, how they do things with words. Semantics invites a focus on meaning and truth conditions without regard to communication and context.
The word Semantics is derived from the Greek word semantikos meaning to show or give signs. Semantics is the study of meaning. It covers a lot of study areas related to language. Semantics help in getting a sense of meaning in context to speakers, writers, readers of learners. It also helps in known that how the meanings got change over a period of time.
Semantics is all about question of meaning, whereas Pragmatics is all about questions of use. It deals with that aspect of meaning which is dependent on the context. Semantics deals with the study of what signs denote. On the other hand, Pragmatics deals with the relation of signs to their users and interpreters.
Semantics is limited to the relation of words to which they refer, whereas pragmatics covers the study of relationships between words, the interlocutors and also the context.

Comparison between Semantics and Pragmatics

	Semantics	Pragmatics
Definition	Semantics is another	Pragmatics understands the
	important field related to theoretical linguistics. It is all about studying the meaning of linguistic expressions.	language meaning but keeping the context in mind.
Focus	Meaning	Language
Scope	Narrow as it deals with only meaning	Broad as it deals with aspects beyond text
Meaning of an Utterance	Context independent	Context dependent
Domain	Grammar	Rhetoric
Example	Semantics deals with the conditions under which the proposition expressed by a sentence is true. These are known as truthconditions. ‘The red cup is on the table’ is True if and only if the red cup is really on the table.	The sentence ‘It is very cold’ by the speaker may mean that temperature is low (semantic approach), or some other explanation. A Pragmatic may also like to consider that may be the speaker wants to switch on the blower and used the statement “it is very cold” as anassociated sentence.

Conclusion

The Module has tried to analyse the basic concept of Semantics and Pragmatics. It has presented various types of semantics on the basis of the occurrence of the meaning. The module has also tried to bring out various types of meaning in various context and the formation of meaning in the sentence. It has discussed the term Pragmatics and several types of contexts in which meaning is formed in regard to the pragmatics. It has also presented different elements of pragmatics such as Entailment, Presupposition and Implicature. The study has broadly come up with the study of relationship between Semantics and Pragmatics.

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