Semantics Theory An Analysis Of Non-Literal Meaning Used In Reader Digest Magazines Advertisement

17 CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1 Semantics Theory

Semantics is a branch of Linguistics. Semantics is generally defined as the study of meaning. Semantics Greek Semantikos, to signify, giving signs, significant, symptomatic from sema, sign refer to the aspects of meaning that are expressed in a language, code or other from representation Peregrine, 2003:3. Semantics has long been an object of study within the philosophy. It is that said that the term semantics itself was introduced into English at the end of the 19 th century. It means that Semantics in term of historical or the study about the historical changes of meaning. Then it is change until the publication of Bearl’s book in 1900. Since then Semantics has been recognized as one of the linguistics studies and knows as a scientific study of meaning in language There are some definitions of Semantics proposed by the linguistics as follows: 1. Katz 1972 says; “Semantics is the study of linguistics meaning. It is concerned with what sentences and other linguist object express, not with the arrangement of their syntactic parts or with their pronunciation”. 2. Palmer 1976:1 says;”semantics is the technical term used to refer to the study of meaning” 3. Leech 1976:ix defines; “Semantics as the study of meaning is central to the study of communication; and as communication becomes more and more a crucial factor in social organization, the need to understand it becomes more and more pressing. Universitas Sumatera Utara 18 Semantics is also the centre of the study of human mind thought processes, cognitions, and conceptualization” 4. Saeed 1974:3 defines; “Semantics is the study of meaning communicated through language and Semantics is the study of meanings of words and sentences”. The explanation by this entire expert, I conclude that Semantics is the branch of linguistics which is studying about the meaning in a language where as the meaning have relation between the sentence and other linguistics. The subject of semantics by a method of elimination informally paraphrased as follow: a. The aim of linguistics is to give an account of a person’s mastery his native tongue, b. Semantics has to account for those aspects of this mystery not accounted for its grammar, c. The following skills fall into the category that is mentioned in the second point and are therefore the concern of semantics. Universitas Sumatera Utara 19

2.2 The Scope of Semantics