Denotative Meaning
Denotative meaning refers to the literal or dictionary definition of a word, devoid of any emotional or cultural associations. It represents the specific, objective, and universally accepted meaning of a word, making it crucial for clear communication and understanding in language. This type of meaning is often contrasted with connotative meaning, which involves the emotional or cultural associations of a word.
3 Key excerpts on "Denotative Meaning"
eBook - ePub- Umberto Eco, Anthony Oldcorn(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Harvard University Press(Publisher)
...9 Toward a History of Denotation Denotation (along with its counterpart, connotation) is considered, depending on the context, as either a characteristic or a function (i) of individual terms (what does the word “dog” denote?); (ii) of declarative propositions (the sentence “the dog barks” may denote a state of the world, that there is a dog barking—but, if “the dog” is taken as denoting a species—all dogs, that is—then it could denote a characteristic common to the entire canine race); (iii) of nominal phrases and definite descriptions (the phrase “the President of the Republic” may denote, depending on the context and the circumstances of its utterance, either the actual president currently in power or the role provided for in a constitution). In each of these cases we must decide whether the denotation has to do with the meaning, the referent, or the act of reference. To sum up, by denotation do we mean what is signified by the term, the thing named, or, in the case of propositions, what is the case or what is believed to be the case, inasmuch as it forms the content of a proposition? For structural linguists, “denotation” is concerned with meaning. For Hjelmslev (1943) the difference between a denotative semiotic and a connotative semiotic lies in the fact that the former is a semiotic whose expression plane is not a semiotic, whereas the latter is a semiotic whose expression plane is a semiotic. Barthes (1964) too formulates his position basing himself on Hjelmslev and develops a fully intensional idea of denotation, according to which, between a signifier and a first (or zero) degree signified, there is always a denotative relationship. In componential analysis, the term has been used to indicate the sense-relationship expressed by a lexical term—such as the term “uncle,” which expresses the relationship “father’s brother” (see, for instance, Leech 1974: 238)...
eBook - ePub- William Frawley(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Literal meaning is determinable outside of context; it comes with its own set of facts. Literal meaning is thus said to be decontextualized. Implicational meaning is not so decidable; everything must be calculated by a hearer, working from the expression in relation to perceived intentions and circumstances. Implicational meaning is thus said to be contextualized. Linguistic semantics is concerned with literal, decontextualized meaning that, furthermore, is associated with the grammatical structure of language. Grammatical structure, like literal meaning, exists outside of the contexts in which it is used. A speaker of German does not choose, on one day, to mark nouns in the dative case, and then choose on another day to mark the same nouns, in the same structure, in the accusative. The grammatical structure of German, like the linguistic meanings associated with that structure, is simply not negotiable. The intentions of a speaker of German, on the other hand, are not a matter of either grammatical structure or the literal meanings associated with grammatical structure. They are negotiable, and they are outside our purview. 1.22. Encoding and Grammatical Meaning Now that we have a grasp of the nature of decontextualized meaning, let us look at how literal meaning is bound up with the mechanisms that language has for grammatical expression. Consider (1) again. This sentence gives overt form to both the event, ‘buying,’ and the participants, ‘Tom’ and ‘rice,’ by grammaticalizing them: They appear as structural categories, nouns and verbs, that are essential to the formation of sentences in English. By definition, the analysis and description of the event and its participants fall under the purview of linguistic semantics because the event and its participants have grammatical relevance. What other literal information in (1) is given grammatically relevant form? In the situation described, we know that Tom carried out the event and acted on the rice...
eBook - ePubLanguage and the Lexicon
An Introduction
- David Singleton(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...in the ‘real world’. We shall then consider that dimension of meaning which has to do with relations between words. Our next port of call will be the suggestion that the meaning of any given word can be analysed into a set of sense components. Finally, we shall examine some ‘cognitive’ approaches to word meaning – that is, approaches which are based on the idea that the ways in which linguistic meanings are constructed and organized come out of our experience of the world and our perception and processing of that experience. 5.2 Meaning seen as reference or denotation It is self-evident that language conveys meaning partly by as it were pointing to various kinds of phenomena in the ‘real world’. In fact, physically pointing to something can often perform the same function as naming it. For example, if I am in the queue for lunch in the university canteen, and, on reaching the servery, I am asked for my order, I may say ‘The egg curry please’, or I may point to the steaming concoction in question, or I may do both. When a linguistic expression ‘points’ in this way in a particular context to a specific entity, attribute, state, process etc., linguists talk about an act of reference, the phenomenon thus identified being labelled as the referent. There is another way in which linguistic expressions can be applied to ‘real world’ phenomena...
