Semantics Meanings of Meaning

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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 Theoretical Framework

The writer uses some books as references to support ideas of this thesis. This is the study about semantics in advertisement, so the writer quotes theories related to the semantics and advertisement.

2.1.1 Semantics

The writer uses Leech theory about meaning to do this analysis. According to Leech 1974: ix sayssemantics is central to the study of communication; and the center of the study of human mind – thought processes, cognition, conceptualization - how we classify and convey our experience of the world language. It must be true that the more we understand the cognitive and communicative structures of language, the better we are able to recognize and control the ‘pathological’ or destructive elements in communication, and the better we are able to appreciate and to foster the forces that make for concord. Crystal 2008:428 sayssemantics is a major branch of linguistics devoted to the study of meaning in language. Griffiths 2006:15 says “Semantics, the study of word meaning and sentence meaning, abstracted away from contexts of use, is a descriptive Universitas Sumatera Utara 7 subject.” When we are dealing with meaning and there is no context to consider, we are doing semantics. Palmer 1976:1 saysSemantics is the technical term used to refer the study of meaning. Unfortunately, ‘meaning’ covers a variety of aspects of language, land there is no vey general agreement either about what meaning is or about the way in which it should be describe. According to the definitions above, meanings are ideas or concepts that speaker transferred to the listener by language they are used. It can be conclude, semantics is the study of meaning, and the language is the object of this study. The study of meaning can be used to communicate better in society, to understand a literary work, every utterance, even in advertisement.

2.1.2 Meanings of Meaning

Palmer 1976: 1 treats semantics as the ‘science’ of meaning, and it was not primarily concerned with the historical change of meaning. The terms besides semantics has been used by some linguists, include semasiology, semology, semiotics, sememics, and semics. The terms are used to refer manipulation of language, mostly to mislead, by choosing the right word. The term meaning is, of course, much more familiar to us all. But the dictionary will suggest a number of different meanings of meaning. It is stated also by Griffiths 2006:15 that semanticsdescription of language knowledge is different from the encyclopedia maker’s task of cataloguing general knowledge. For the example the words tangerine and Clementine illustrate distinctions that are not part of our knowledge of English, but rather a fruiter’s kind of expertise, Universitas Sumatera Utara 8 which some other people also know, but which most users of English do not have to know. As long as they are aware that these are citrus fruits, they do not need English lessons on this point. Palmer explained mean here and meaning too is used of signs, both natural and conventional, signs that indicate something that is happening or will happen, or something that has be done. Such signs provide information or give instructions, and it is easy to assume that language consists of signs of a similar kind. According to Griffiths 2006:10, he gave a statement that is said the speaker is called as sender’s meaning, that is the meaning that the speaker or writer intends to convey by means of an utterance. Sender’s meaning is something that addresses continually having to make informed guesses about. Addressees can give indications, in their own next utterances, of their interpretation or by performing other actions. The sender or fellow addressees or even bystanders will sometimes offer confirmation, corrections or elaborations. Sender’s thoughts are private, but utterances are publicly observable. Typed or written utterances can be studied on paper or on the screens of digital devices. Spoken utterances can be recorded and played back. Other people who were present when an utterance was produced can be asked what they heard, or saw being written. We cannot be sure that sender meaning always coincides with addressee interpretation, so there is a dilemma over what to regard as the meaning of an utterance. Is it sender’s meaning or the interpretation that is made from the utterance, in context, by the addressees? We cannot know exactly Universitas Sumatera Utara 9 what either of these is. However, as language users, we gain experience as both senders and addressees and develop intuitions about the meaning an utterance is likely to carry in a given context. How can we fail to say what we mean, or rather, how can the words failed to mean what we mean? Of course that we wish to suggest that the words do not mean what we might most obviously be thought to mean, that there is some other meaning besides the ‘literal’ meaning of the words. There are a number of quite different ways of achieving this. We can quite simply use such features as intonation or even perhaps non-linguistic signs such as a wink to indicated that the words must not be taken literary. In this respect there is one intonation tune in English that is particularly interesting – the fall – rise, in which the intonation falls and rises on the ‘accented’ word in a sentence. For this tune expresses reservations; Palmer 1976:4 gives example, I can say, with sarcasm, that’s very clever, to mean ‘That’s very stupid’, and if I winked when I say That’s mine, I probably intend to suggest that is not. The word ‘meaning’ and its corresponding verb ‘to mean’ are among the most eminently discussable terms the English language. The example above showed that we shall not make much progress in the study of meaning by simply looking at common or even scholarly uses of the relevant terms. We must attempt to see what meaning is, or should be, within the framework of an ‘academic’ or ‘scientific’ discipline. Semantics is a part of linguistics, the scientific study of language. Semantics cannot escape from language. Universitas Sumatera Utara 10

2.1.3 Types of Meaning