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Social Sci LibreTexts

6: Meaning- Semantics and Pragmatics

  • Catherine Anderson, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Derek Denis, Julianne Doner, Margaret Grant, Nathan Sanders, and Ai Taniguchi
  • eCampusOntario

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Learning Objectives

When you’ve completed this chapter, you’ll be able to:

  • Acknowledge the plurality of linguistic theories concerning the status of the lexicon, explain the differences between each theory, and evaluate the pros and cons of each theory;
  • Explain why the dictionary is not the ultimate authority of linguistic meaning;
  • Analyse linguistic meaning critically based on descriptive observations;
  • Gain a general understanding of what kinds of concepts lexical meaning encodes in language;
  • Explain the difference between sense and denotation;
  • Use diagnostics to identify entailments, implicatures, and presuppositions;
  • Evaluate the usefulness of each kind of meaning in linguistic analysis;
  • Appreciate the complexity and diversity of linguistic meaning.

This chapter is about linguistic meaning, particularly semantics: how the meaning of words combine to form the meaning of sentences. We will start by examining lexical meaning: what goes into the meaning of a word and other smaller linguistic expressions stored in your mental lexicon. We will examine various theories of lexical meaning and evaluate the pros and cons of each one. The latter half of the chapter focuses on case studies of linguistic meaning across categories and across languages, and along the way, we will think about what it means for the meaning of one word to combine with the meaning of another word. We will examine various data across categories and across languages in order to appreciate the complexity of human semantic competence.

  • 6.1: Arbitrariness and Compositionality
    The page discusses semantics and its key principles, focusing on the concept of arbitrariness in language as proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure, and the principle of compositionality by Gottlob Frege. It explains how arbitrariness implies that language terms are assigned meanings randomly, while compositionality suggests that the meaning of a whole is determined by its parts.
  • 6.2: The mental lexicon
  • 6.3: The nature of lexical meaning
    This page explores the nature of lexical meaning, examining the relationship between lexical and world knowledge and presenting various theories. It discusses the idea of lexical meanings either being distinct from or identical to concepts. Furthermore, it explains how people categorize objects with fuzzy boundaries, such as between cups and bowls, and addresses the influence of prototypes in organizing concepts.
  • 6.4: Events and thematic roles
    This chapter discusses the different types of meaning in linguistics and how lexical meaning is understood in the mind. It explores semantic competence in language users by asking key questions about how words form meaningful combinations, the sensitivity of linguistic meaning to different information types, and variation in semantic parameters across languages.
  • 6.5: Why not the dictionary?
    The page discusses the complexity of lexical meaning and the limitations of using dictionaries as an ultimate language authority. It highlights issues such as errors by lexicographers and the existence of fictitious entries like "mountweazels." It emphasizes that not all words are in dictionaries and that language users, not dictionaries, create meaning.
  • 6.6: Pragmatics Definitions
  • 6.7: What does this sentence "mean"? Entailments vs. implicatures
    This chapter explores how word meanings combine to create sentence meaning, focusing on entailments, implicatures, and presuppositions. It discusses how sentences can entail other sentences, using examples to show when one sentence's truth necessarily leads to another's truth. Additionally, it distinguishes between entailments and implicatures, which suggest but don't guarantee truth.
  • 6.8: Cross-community differences in discourse
    The text discusses how conversational rules can differ across cultures, using a personal anecdote about learning sarcasm in American English as an example. It highlights the variability of conversational norms, such as what is considered polite, honest, or rude, across different languages and cultures. The importance of being open-minded and non-judgmental when encountering different discourse rules is emphasized.
  • 6.9: Conversational implicatures
    The page discusses the differences between entailments and implicatures in semantics, emphasizing that implicatures can change with context while entailments remain constant. It explores performative speech acts and their real-world consequences, like marriage or job offers, highlighting that their power depends on societal recognition.
  • 6.10: The Cooperative Principle
    This text delves into the Cooperative Principle in conversation, proposed by philosopher Paul Grice. It explores why certain implicatures arise in discourse through implicit conversational principles: the maxims of Quality, Quantity, Relation, and Manner. Each maxim addresses a specific conversational expectation, such as truthfulness, informativeness, relevance, and clarity.
  • 6.11: Illocutionary meaning
    This text explores illocutionary meaning, which refers to the meaning behind a speaker's utterance in terms of their intent in a conversation. It highlights that beyond the literal truth-conditional meaning, sentences convey additional layers of meaning based on context, such as implicatures, assertions, questions, or requests. The concept of language as performative is discussed, where utterances can effect change or action.
  • 6.12: Deixis
    The page discusses the concept of deixis, which refers to expressions whose meanings depend on the context, such as who is speaking or the situation. It explains that first- and second-person pronouns are inherently deictic because they reference the speaker or the addressee. Spatial deixis involves terms like "here" and "there," which shift meaning based on location, while temporal deixis involves expressions like "today" or verb tenses, which depend on the time of utterance.
  • 6.13: Exercise your linguistics skills
    The page provides exercises related to semantics and pragmatics. In semantics, it includes tasks like analyzing the category of vehicles, defending non-traditional word meanings, and comparing theories of linguistic meaning. The pragmatics section covers topics like maxims of conversation, the "lawyer dog" case related to the Cooperative Principle, the ranking of Grice's maxims especially the maxim of Quality, and analyzing illocutionary meaning in questions.


This page titled 6: Meaning- Semantics and Pragmatics is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Catherine Anderson, Bronwyn Bjorkman, Derek Denis, Julianne Doner, Margaret Grant, Nathan Sanders, and Ai Taniguchi (eCampusOntario) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.

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