Chapter 1

What is Semantics?

Semantics refers to meaning and meaning is so intangible that one group of linguists, the structuralists, preferred not to deal with it or rely on it all. To illustrate what we mean by the intangible quality of ‘meaning’,  think of such words as ‘beauty’, ‘goodness’, ‘love’; it would be hard to find two people who agree absolutely on what each of these words implies. A person may seem good to one onlooker and a hypocrite to another. Similarly, we all think we know what we mean by ‘boy’ and ‘man’, but at what age does a boy cease to be a boy? at thirteen? fifteen? eighteen? twenty-one? Meaning is a variable and not to be taken for granted. Under the subject of semantics we shall deal with the following areas of interest:

(1)         the fact that a word can have more than one meaning, for example ball can be both a dance and a round object for bouncing.

(2)         the fact that different words appear to have the same meaning, for example ‘regal’ and ‘royal’ or ‘big’ and ‘large’

(3)         the fact that some words can be analyzed into components such as adult, female, for example mare implies both adult and female as well as horse.

(4)         the fact that some words seem to have opposites, for example ‘long’ and ‘short’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ but not ‘desk’ or ‘table’

(5)         the fact that the meanings of some words are included in the meaning of others, for example the meaning of ‘tree’ is included in that of ‘elm’

(6)         the fact that  certain combinations of words have meaning which are very different from the combination of their separate meanings, for example the meanings of ‘pass’ plus the meanings of ‘on’ do not add up to the meaning of ‘die’ although that is what ‘pass on’ can mean.

BASIC IDEAS IN SEMANTICS

SEMANTICS is the study of MEANING in LANGUAGE. It may seem to you that meaning is so vague, insubstantial, and elusive that it is impossible to come to any clear, concrete, or tangible conclusions about it. We hope to convince you that by careful thought about the language you speak and the way it is used, definite conclusions CAN  be arrived at concerning meaning. In the first exercise below, we ask you to start to get yourself into the habit of careful thinking about your language and the way you use it, concentrating, naturally, on instances of such words as mean, means, and meaning.

        The word mean, then, can be applied to people who use language, i.e. to speakers (and authors), in roughly the sense of ‘intend’. And it can be applied to words and sentences in a different sense, roughly expressed as ‘be equivalent to’. The first step in working out a theory of what meaning is, is to recognize this distinction clearly and always to keep in mind whether we are talking about what speakers mean or what words (or sentences) mean. The following two definitions encapsulate this essential distinction.

       SPEAKER MEANING is what a speaker means (i.e. intends to convey) when he uses a piece of language. SENTENCE MEANING (or WORD MEANING) is what a sentence (or word) means, i.e. what it counts as the equivalent of in the language concerned. The distinction is useful in analyzing the various kinds of communication between people made possible by language.

Practice: Read the following conversation between two people, A and B, at a bus stop one morning. (The lines are numbered for reference.) then answer the questions (1) – (8).

1        A: “Nice day”

2        B: “Yes, a bit warmer than yesterday, isn’t it?”

3        A: “That’s right – one day fine, the next cooler”

4        B: “I expect it might get cooler again tomorrow”

5        A: “Maybe – you never know what to expect, do you?”

6        B: “No. have you been way on holiday?”

7        A: “Yes, we went to Spain”

8        B: “Did you? We’re going to France next month”

9        A: “Oh, Are you? That’ll be nice for the family. Do they speak French?”

10    B: “Sheila’s quite good at it, and we’re hoping Martin will improve”

11    A: “I expect he will. I do hope you have a good time”

12    B: “Thank you. By the way, has the 42 bus gone by yet? It seems to be late”

13    A: “No. I’ve been here since eight o’clock and I haven’t seen it”

14    B: “Good. I don’t  want to be late for work. What time is it now?”

15    A: “Twenty-five past eight”

(1)           Does speaker A  tell speaker B anything he doesn’t

          already know in line 1,3, and 5?                                         Yes/No

(2)           Does A’s statement in line 7 give B any new

           information?                                                                      Yes/No

(3)           When B says “Did you?” in line 8, is he really

          asking A to tell him whether he (A) went to Spain?           Yes/No

(4)           Is there any indication that A needs to know the

          information that B gives him about traveling to

          France?                                                                               Yes/No

(5)           Does A’s “That’ll be nice for the family” in line 9

          give B any information?                                                      Yes/No

(6)           Do A’s statements in lines 13 and 15 give B any

          information that he (B) needs?                                           Yes/No

(7)           At what point does this conversation switch from an exchange of uninformative statements?

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(8)           At what point does the information exchanged begin to be of a sort that one of the speakers actually needs for some purpose in going about his everyday business?

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       All the things said in this conversation are meaningful in one way or another. But one must not equate meaningfulness with informativeness in a narrow sense. While it is true that many sentences do carry information in  a straightforward way, it is also true that many sentences are used by speakers not to give information at all, but to keep the social wheels turning smoothly. Thus A and B’s uninformative exchange about the weather serves to reassure them both that a friendly courteous relationship exists between them. Even when the sentences produced are in fact  informative, as  when B tells A about his forthcoming trip to France, the hearer often has no specific need for the information given. The giving of information is itself an act of courtesy, performed to strengthen social relationships. This is also part of communication.

       The social relationships formed and maintained by the use of language are not all courteous and amicable, speaker meaning can include both courtesy and hostility, praise and insult, endearment and taunt.

        The same sentences are used by different speakers on different occasions to mean (speaker meaning) different things. Once a person has mastered the stable meanings of words and sentences as defined by the language system, he can quickly grasp the different  conversational and social uses that they can be put to. Sentence meaning and speaker meaning are both important, but systematic study proceeds more easily if one carefully distinguishes the two, and, for the most part, gives prior consideration to sentence meaning and those aspects of meaning generally which are determined by the language system, rather than those which reflect  the will of individual speakers and the circumstances of use on particular occasions.

        The gap between speaker meaning and sentence meaning is such that it is even possible for a speaker to convey a quite intelligible intention by using a sentence whose literal meaning is contradictory or nonsensical.