13 Richards 1923 has found twenty-two definitions of meaning. Some of the
definitions of meaning are: an intrinsic property; the other words annexed to a word in the dictionary; the connotation of a word; an essence; that to which is actually
related to a sign by a chosen relation; that to which the user of a symbol actually refers, etc. They show how confusion and misunderstanding arise because of lack of
agreement on such a basic term 1946: 186-187. Bloomfield 1933 has had a slightly different emphasis on meaning. It was
not the scientific study of mental phenomena, i.e. thought and symbolization, but the scientific definition of everything to which language may refer.
We can define the meaning of a speech-form accurately when this meaning has to do with some matter of which we possess scientific knowledge. We can define the names
of minerals, for example, in terms of chemistry and mineralogy, as when we say that the ordinary meaning of the English word salt
is ‘sodium chloride’ NaCl, and we can define the names of plants or animals by means of the technical terms of botany
or zoology, but we have no precise way of defining words like love or hate, which concern situations that have not been accurately classified
– and these latter are in the great majority. Language, p. 139
Finally, Bloomfield has come to a conclusion that the definition of meaning
progresses by a continuing process of revision and clarification, leading to greater clarity and depth of understanding.
2.1.2. Word Meaning
The definition of word meaning is as elusive as the definition of the term meaning. Ogden and Richards 1946: 10 claim that the words mean nothing by
themselves and it is only when a thinker makes use of them that they stand for anything, or, in one sense, have „meaning‟. It is a consequence of their theory of
meaning presented by the semiotic triangle where the relationship between symbol and referent is indirect. As Hanks 2007: 7 explains, the words stand for objects only
14 indirectly, through the thoughts of people who use them and therefore the meaning of
a word may vary slightly in the conceptual schemata of individual speakers, and the way in which the world is conceived may also vary from speaker to speaker.
Crystal 1985: 236 adds that the assumption that words carry the meaning in a language is wrong as the meaning is carried by sentences. In order to understand
what is meant, we have to put the word in a context, which usually means to put it into a sentence e.g. the word „table‟ which can mean either a piece of furniture or a
part of a printed page. Taylor 2003:87 explicitly says that we can only understand the meaning of a
linguistic form in context of other cognitive structures and he stresses the fact that word meanings are always characterized against a particular context, e.g. the word
Monday in the context of the concept „week‟. Cruse 1986: 16 also insists on the
importance of context when claiming that the meaning of a word is constituted by its contextual relations. Hofmann then avoids the idea that a word has a fixed meaning
that you can look up in the dictionary 1993: 9 and claims that word meanings cannot be true or false until applied to something 1993: 15.
The meaning of a word cannot be possibly defined because it can vary in the minds of different speakers; in addition, the meaning always depends on the context.
Hence, the meaning of the words always depends on their relation to other words as well as on the whole context. This is even more true about the evaluative words such
as the selected adjectives pretty and handsome. The meaning of the adjectives depends on the object they collocate with e.g. living or non-living beings as well as
on the perception of the speaker.
15
2.1.3. Types of Meaning
