Meaning of Language –
Semantics & Pragmatics
What is meaning?
• Many linguists make a distinction between
– Literal/conventionalized meaning
• “core meaning”, independent of context • This belongs to semantics
– Speaker meaning & context
• What a speaker means when they say something,
over and above the literal meaning.
• This and other “contextual” effects belong to
The study of meaning
• Semantics is the study of meaning of
morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences.
Lexical semantics deals with the meaning of words, and the relationship among words.
Sentential/phrasal semantics deals with the meaning of syntactic units larger than the word.
• Pragmatics is the study of how context affects
Lexical Semantics
• It is the study of how and what the words of a language denote.
• Semantic properties: The components of meaning of a word.
• Semantic feature (SF): A notational device for expressing the presence or absence of semantic properties by pluses and minuses.
• Componential analysis: the analysis of words through structured sets of semantic features, which are given as “present”, “absent” or “indifferent with reference to
• Example of componential analysis:
man = [+ male], [+ mature]
woman = [– male], [+ mature] boy = [+ male], [– mature]
girl = [– male] [– mature]
child = [+/– male] [– mature]
• In other words, the word girl can have three basic
Lexical Relations
• Synonymy: words that have the same meanings,
e.g. start & begin.
• Antonymy: words that are opposite in meanings,
e.g. hot & cold.
• Polysemy: A word which has two or more related
meanings, e.g. bright: ‘shining’ ; ‘intelligent’
• Homonymy: A word which has two or more
entirely distinct meanings, e.g. club: ‘a social organization’ ; ‘a blunt weapon’.
• Homophony: Different words pronounced the
• Homography: Different words spelled the same but pronounced differently, e.g. tear.
• Hyponymy: Words whose meanings are
specific instances of a more general word, e.g.
red and blue are hyponyms of the word color.
• Metonymy: A word substituted for another word with which it is closely associated, e.g.
Sentential Relations
• Paraphrase: Two sentences that can have the
same meaning.
a. The police chased the burglar &
The burglar was chased by the police. b. Paul bought a car from Sue &
• Entailment: a relation in which the truth of
one sentence necessarily implies the truth of another.
• Examples of asymmetrical entailment.
a. The park wardens killed the tiger. The tiger is dead.
• Contradiction: When two sentences cannot
both be true.
a. Charles is a bachelor. b. Charles is married.
• Metaphor: a word or phrase for one thing that
is used to refer to another thing in order to show or suggest that they are similar
Pragmatics
• This a subfield of linguistics concerned with speech acts
• J. L Austin (1962) – language is made up of
Speech Acts
• Speech Acts are actions that bring about
change in the existing state of affairs
• By saying “I warn you that there is a sheepdog
in the closet”, you not only say something, you warn someone.
Some common speech acts
Speech Act Function
Assertion conveys information
Question elicits information
Request (more or less politely) elicits action
Order demands action
Promise commits the speaker to an action
The cooperative principles
• Grice (1989) proposed four maxims to explain
how people cooperate when they speak:
Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner.
• When a maxim is violated (or “flouted”), a conversational implicature results, i.e., the
Maxims of Conversations
• The maxim of quantity
Make your contribution as informative as required. No more and no less.
• The maxim of quality
Do not say what you believe to be false and do not say what you lack evidence for.
• The maxim of relevance
Be relevant
• The maxim of manner
Examples
1. I’m a multimillionaire (Actually, I’m penniless.)
Violated maxim: Quality (The speaker has failed to tell the truth.) 2. A: When am I going to get back the money I lent you?
B: Boy, it’s hot in here!
Violated maxim: Relevance (B’s answer is not related to A’s question.)
3. A: What should I do to get rid of this headache, Doctor? B: Take some medicine.
Violated maxim: Quantity (B has not provided enough information.)
4. John: Let's get the kids something. Mary: OK, but not I-C-E C-R-E-A-M.
Politeness
• Besides cooperation, most interactions are governed
by politeness, that is to say by what is considered a “polite social behavior” within a certain culture.
• Brown and Levinson (1987) argue that politeness in
language is centered around the notion of face – “the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself” – and the efforts made by
• Polite usage of language comes into play
whenever a speaker has the potential to produce a face-threatening act (FTA), an utterance that undermines the face of the individual to whom the utterance is directed.
If three people are speaking and one says to another, “You look horrible today,” the
• In determining the exact level of politeness that
will be employed to mitigate an FTA, Brown and Levinson (1987:15) propose 3 considerations:
1. power relationships existing between speakers
2. social distance
Power relationships
• In any social group, there will be differing power
relationships among people.
• Example: In a classroom, there will be a disparate
power relationship between teacher and
• Power relationship affects how people
communicate.
• Students may use honorifics (Professor,
Doctor) to address their teachers as a way of explicitly marking the disparate power
relationship. In contrast, students may use
Social distance
How close a social relationship individuals have.
Intimates will have very little social distance between them, whereas a teacher and students will have a
greater social distance separating them
• The greater social distance, the greater the
requirement for polite usage of language
• Example: calling one’s boss sweetheart is likely to be
perceived as highly inappropriate and impolite,
Face and politeness strategies
• Speakers have strategies for lessening the threat.
• Positive politeness strategies:
- minimize the threat to the hearer’s positive face. - are used to make the hearer feel good about
himself, his interests or possessions
• Some strategies of positive politeness include
statements of friendship, solidarity, compliments
• Example: You must be hungry, it's a long time since
• Negative politeness strategies are oriented
towards the hearer’s negative face and
emphasize avoidance of imposition on the hearer.
• Example: I’m sorry; it’s a lot to ask, but can
