Even Leech in Semantics supported this statement by dividing meaning into: a. Meaning as reference
It is said that the meaning of linguistics sign is what that sign refer to, what it stand for in the real word.
b. Meaning as mental concept It is considered that the meaning of linguistics sign is the mental concept it
stand for, that the meaning of a word is the idea it conveys or arouses in the mind of the speaker or hearer.
c. Meaning as usage It is the meaning of a word as the ability to use that word in ways other people
will understand, and to understand it when uttered by other people.
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3. Types of Meaning
According to Geoffrey Leech in his ‘Semantics a Study of meaning’ 1974 breaks down meaning into seven types or ingredients giving primacy to conceptual
meaning.
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 an inextricable and essential part of what language is such that one can scarcely define
language without referring to it. Such a meaning is stylistically neutral and objective as opposed to other kinds of associative meanings.
Conceptual meanings are the
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Geoffry, Leech. Semantics. New Zealand: Penguin Book ltd. 1997. p.12
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.
Contrastive features underline the classification of sound in phonology, for example, in that any label we apply to a sound defines it positively, by what features it possesses
and also by implication negatively, by what features it does not possess. 2. Connotative Meaning
Connotative meaning is the communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to, 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. For example the conceptual content of
‘woman’ is +human + female+ adult but the psychosocial connotations could be ‘gregarious’ or easy to break the ice with the new people, ‘having maternal instinct’
attributes of womanhood like ‘babbling’,’ experienced in cookery’, instinct for develop the child.
3. Social Meaning Stylistic Meaning Stylistic meaning is that which a piece of language conveys about the social
circumstances of its use. 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. When we listen the Javanese speak we can quest directly that the speaker is a Javanese. We know that through the stylist which used the Javanese
generally. The sound is more lower than other language and there are so much word choice that have to be used in proper situation and proper hearer.
4. Affective or Emotive Meaning Affective meaning is refers to emotive association or effects of words evoked in
the reader, listener. It is what is carried about the personal feelings or attitude to the listener.
For Leech affective meaning refers to what is convey about the feeling and attitude of the speaker through use of language attitude to listener as well as attitude
to what he is saying. For example A ‘you are a vicious tyrant and a villainous reprobate, and I hate you for it It is show the feeling of the speaker that hate the
speaker very much. Sentence B I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but I wonder if you would be so kind as to lower your voices a little. The speaker shows his attitude by
scaling remarks according to politeness. 5. Reflected Meaning
Reflected meaning is the meaning which arises in cases of multiple conceptual meaning, when one sense of a word forms part of our response to another sense. Leech
says that in church service ‘the Holy Ghost and the comforter’ refer to the third in Trinity. The comfort sounds warm and ‘comforting although in the religious context, it
means ‘the strengthener or supporter, while The Holy Ghost sounds awesome or
wonderful. Although they are similar but unconsciously there is a response to their non-religious meanings too. Therefore the ‘comforter’ sounds warm and comforting
while the ‘Ghost’ sounds ‘awesome wonderful’ or even ‘dreadful’. 6. Collocative Meaning
Collocative meaning consist of the associations a word acquires on account of the meanings of words which tend to occur in its environment. Words collocate or co-
occur with certain words only for example pretty and handsome share common ground in the meaning ‘good looking’, but may be distinguished by the range of nouns with
which they are likely to co-occur. However, they little differrent from each other because of collocation or co-occurrence. The word ‘pretty’ collocates with girls,
woman, village, gardens, flowers, etc, and handsome collocates with boy, man, car, vessel, overcoat, etc.
7. Thematic Meaning Thematic meaning 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. We can see in the active and passive sentence, though its conceptual meaning is the same.
For example A Mr. Adam donated the first prize to the church and B the first prize was donated by Mr. Adam. 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.
4. The Role of Context Situation in the Meaning of Language
