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Leech cites several definitions of the word meaning from Odgen and Richard 1923 who state twenty-two definitions. Some of the definitions are
an intrinsic property the other words annexed to a word in the dictionary
the connotation of a word the place of anything in a system
the practical consequences of a thing in our future experience that to which the user of a symbol actually refers
that to which the user of a symbol ought to be referring that to which the user of a symbol believes himself to be referring
that to which the interpreter of a symbol
a refers
b believes himself to be referring
c believes the user to be referring p. 1
Leech concludes that the list of the definitions of the word meaning shows the confusion and misunderstanding because of the lack of agreement about which
definition is the most appropriate. Referring to the Odgen and Richard’s definitions of the word meaning,
there are two aspects can be concerned: a symbol and what it refers to. Thus, a meaning can be understood as the message referred by the symbol. The symbol
can be language and the message it refers to can be a concept in the mind or something in the real world.
1. Types of Meaning
Lyon 1977a proposes three types of meaning, namely descriptive meaning, social meaning, and expressive meaning. The first type is related to the
statement or description of affairs. The second type is related to the establishment and maintaining social relationships and the third type is related to the expression
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of one’s attitudes and feeling. However, Lyon gives more concerns to the descriptive meaning because “it can be objectively verified” p. 50.
Leech 1981 categorizes meaning into seven types. a Conceptual meaning
Conceptual meaning is also called as denotative or cognitive meaning since it is presumed to be a fundamental element in linguistic communication and
the primary functioning of language. Leech puts conceptual meaning as a priority beca
use “it has a complex and sophisticated organization, … and cross related to, similar organization on the syntactic and phonological levels of language” p.9.
Conceptual meaning includes two principles of the basis of all linguistic patterning, namely contrastive and structure. In the principle of contrastive, a
meaning can possess features positively and negatively. For example, the meaning of the word woman has features as + HUMAN,
– MALE, + ADULT, which is distinguishable with the word boy that has features as + HUMAN, + MALE,
– ADULT. In the principle of structure, larger meaning units are fragmented into
smaller units. For example, a sentence can be analyzed syntactically into its component parts, starting from its immediate syntactic component through a
hierarchy of sub-division to its smallest syntactic components. The two principles represent what are called by linguists as paradigmatic and syntagmatic of
linguistic structure. Conceptual meaning provides a semantic representation to match the meaning of a sentence with the correct phonological and syntactic
representations to distinguish it from any other possible meanings.
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b Connotative meaning Connotative meaning is “the communicative value an expression has by
virtue of what it refers to, over an d above its purely conceptual content” p.12.
Connotative meaning can cover all possible features of referent of a meaning including physical characteristics, psychological, and social properties which are
found in real world. Compared to conceptual meaning, connotative meaning is not specific in language but it is understood in communicative systems. Connotative
meaning is relatively unstable because it depends on the culture, history, and what the individual goes through. Connotative meaning is open-ended because any
properties of the referent can contribute to connotative meaning subjectively or objectively which is in contrast with conceptual meaning that has a certain
number of rules to limit the symbols and the semantic representation of a sentence.
c Social meaning Social meaning deals with the aspect of communication which is related to
the situation where the sentence occurs. Social meaning expresses the social circumstances of its use. Social meaning is depicted in the way such as dialectical
pronunciation resulted from the geographical or social origin of the speaker, the social relationship among the speakers, formal or literary language usage and even
slang. Those are the variations of socio-stylistic according to dialect, time, province, status, modality, and singularity.
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d Affective meaning Affective meaning is the expression of language that conveys personal
feeling of the speaker to the listener or to something being talked about. Affective meaning deals with the aspect of communication as well. In affective meaning,
intonation and voice tone are important because they can give impressions that serve the meaning to convey, for example polite, friendly, sarcastic or displeasure.
Through affective meaning, the speaker can communicate the feelings or attitudes without any other semantic function. For example, the expression like “Aha” and
“Yippee” can express emotions without a full grammatical sentence. e Reflected meaning
Reflected meaning comes up in the case of multiple conceptual meanings where one sense of a word constitutes our understanding to another sense.
Reflected meaning is mostly found in poetry. The case where reflective meaning implies unpleasant expressions is when it illustrates a taboo meaning. For
example, the words that have connection with physiology of sex are difficult to use without bringing up the sexual association. People may rather choose not to
use those words frequently. f Collocative meaning
Collocative meaning associates a word with other words that tend to occur in its environment. For example, the adjectives pretty and handsome define the
meaning of ‘good looking’. However, both words may be distinct because of the
nouns that are commonly co-occurred or collocated. Pretty will be suitable for
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nouns that have female features a pretty girl while handsome will collocate with nouns that have male features a handsome boy.
g Thematic meaning Thematic meaning is the way when people want to focus on, stress or
govern the messages. For example, an active sentence may have a different meaning from its passive form in certain context though both active and passive
sentences are equivalent. “Thematic meaning is mainly a matter of choice between alternative grammatical constructions
” p.19. In short, thematic meaning arises to highlight messages or information in the communication whether by
using the grammatical construction or stress and intonation to build particular communicative values.
Furthermore, Leech makes a consideration to put the seven types of meaning into three larger categories: conceptual meaning, associative meaning
which includes connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, and collocative meaning, and thematic meaning. He uses
“sense” as the term for conceptual meaning or meaning in the narrower sense and in wider sense of meaning that includes all seven types of meaning, he gives
the term as “communicative values”.
2. Meaning and Sense
