semanticsisgenerallydefinedasthestudyofmeaning.doc

Semantics has a close relationship with linguistic which is generally defined as the study of a whole sentence .They are a unified unity because both of them have to make sense of the words’ meaning first. And if you want to shed more light on the whole linguistic system, you should do nothing but understand the meaning first. So what is SEMANTICS? And what’s the relationship between SEMANTICS and meaning? SEMANTICS is generally defined as the study of the meaning of linguistic unites, words and sentences in particular. Meaning has always been a central topic in human scholarship, though the term “semantics” has only a history of a little over a hundred years.From C.K.Ogden and I.A.Richards’s The Meaning of Meaning to G.Leech’s Semantics, from the past to the present, the studies of semantics never stop. In the book of The Meaning of Meaning, C.K.Ogden and I.A.Richards’s presented a “representative list of main definitions which reputable students of meaning have favoured”. There are 16 major categories of them, with sub- categories all together, numbering 22. It has Great Significance to the study of modern semantics. However, now the most popular theories of semantics is proposed by G.Leech. He had put the study of meaning under the social cultural background and emphasized the communicative function of meaning. In the book of Semantics, first published in 1974, G.Leech in a more moderate tone recognized 7 types of meaning. Then we will respectively describe the 7 types in detail.G.Leech says that the first type of meaning---conceptual meaning------makes up the central part. It is “denotative” in that it is concerned with the relationship between a word and the thing it denotes, or refers to. In this sense, conceptual meaning overlaps to a large extent with the notion of the REFERENCE. But what’s the definition of “concept”? Leech described it with the word “elusive”. So how can we describe it? In a word, concept is belonging to all human beings, even though they speak different languages. For instance, the word “meal”, whether in China, Japan or in England, France, no matter what language they use to communicate, the concept of the word “meal” may not make a difference, for all people “meal” is something that can fill an empty stomach. You don’t have to take the different dietary habits into account, needn’t to consider what they eat. As a matter of fact, the conceptual meaning is the most original and purest meaning. So the conceptual meaning of the word “girl” is minor female, the word “woman” is adult female, “boy” is minor male, “man” is adult male. Everything has a process of origin and development, so is language. The conceptual meaning is exactly the original meaning that people endow the word. The associative meaning is the meaning refers to some additional meaning, which can’t form without the development of society communication; it is empirical summarization which comes from human beings’ daily life. So the associative meaning can directly or indirectly reflect the cultural concept of a certain linguistic community. Leech divide associative meaning into 5 more detailed and smaller categories.The first category is the connotative meaning. Its definition is what is communicated by virtue of what language refers to. This meaning is always unstable compared with the conceptual meaning. For example, in England “old” is quite different with Chinese word “年老”. In China, people think highly of the old because old means experienced and wise. However, in England, beyond doubt, “old” is taboo. In English, old includes a lot of negative connotations such as full of winkles on the face, slow movements, as weak as a cat, etc. So the English are more used to speak “senior” instead of “old”. In their opinion, senior includes a lot of positive senses like experienced and respected. In England the aged persons prefer to be called “senior”. In fact, Old and senior, both of their conceptual meanings is aged people, but their connotative meanings are quite different. For another example, 梅花，in most of the ancient Chinese poems, it stands for noble, strong, humble character, determined to work hard give incentives. However, in Hong Kong, when people visit friends, relatives or patients, it was the most taboo to send “wintersweet”. That’s because in Chinese “梅” sounds like “霉”. We can find that the connotative meaning always has a certain connection with the social taboo and euphemism. In China, there are many examples except “梅”. Chinese people is disgusting to say “death”, so when somebody passed away, they say “他走了” or “他不在人世了 ” or”他没有了” . The second meaning is social meaning. It is communicated of the social circumstance of language use. Leech thinks the social meaning should take the cultural context and history background into account. Different social circumstances lead to the same thing in different areas has quite different social senses a。