Meaning - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 16
About This Presentation
Title:

Meaning

Description:

'dog' denotes a class of entities belonging to a class denoted 'animal' ... students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:36
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 17
Provided by: spro2
Category:
Tags: callow | meaning

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Meaning


1
Meaning
  • Lone Albrecht
  • ASB

2
Words
  • Sense, reference Denotation
  • Two sense-relations Antonomy Hyponymy
  • Polysemy Synonymy

3
Sense relations
  • Antonymy
  • Gradable
  • Wide narrow
  • Short long
  • Complementary
  • Married single
  • Husband wife
  • Boy girl
  • Summer winter
  • Reversed
  • Buy sell
  • Married divorced
  • Live - die

4
Another sense relation
  • Hyponymy
  • Superordinate
  • Hyponym
  • Sheep
  • ram ewe lamb

5
Reference
  • Situational Textual
  • Exophora endophora

To preceding text anaphora
To following textcataphora
6
Denotation
  • Refers to the objective meaning of a word in
  • general
  • dog denotes a class of entities belonging to a
    class denoted animal
  • the dog denotes a specific dog or to the
    species

7
Polysemy
  • Multiple meaning a property of single words
  • Head top part of body
  • top of nail
  • manager
  • intellect
  • promontory

8
Synonymy
  • Identical meaning??
  • Kingly / Royal / Regal
  • Brotherly / Fraternal
  • Buy / Purchase
  • World / Universe
  • Fall / Autumn
  • Statesman / Politician
  • Thrifty / Economical / Stingy

9
Criterial and non-criterial Aspects of Meaning
  • Woman
  • Criterial
  • human
  • - male
  • adult
  • Non-criterial
  • Physical biped
  • having a womb
  • Psychological social
  • gregarious
  • subject to maternal instincts
  • Typical capable of speech
  • experienced in cookery
  • skirt-or-dress-wearing
  • etc.

10
Denotative vs Connotative Meaning
  • Denotation
  • Basic, cognitive meaning of a word. Direct
    reference to thing,
  • person, place, property, process, activity
    without extraneous,
  • emotive association
  • Connotation
  • The attitudes, feelings and emotions aroused by
    the word,
  • added to the denotational meaning of the word.
    The
  • connotational meaning may be more important
    than the
  • denotational meaning

11
Denotative and Connotative Lexical Items
Predominantly denotative Context-bound denotative or connotative Predominantly connotative
Sodium chloride Converter Steel melting furnaces Telephone directory Salt Bird Crow Etc. Terrible Tyranny Butterfingers Etc.
12
Reflected Meaning
  • What is communicated through association with
    another sense of the same expression
  • Taboo meaning - often words associated with sex
    and other physiological functions I hardly need
    mention any!
  • The Holy Ghost, The Comforter

13
EMOTIVE MEANING
  • What is communicated of the feelings and
    attitudes of the speaker/writer
  • Most often referred to as expressive meaning (in
    Jakobsons model of language functions).

14
Thematic Meaning
  • What is communicated by the way in which the
    message is organized in terms of order and
    emphasis
  • Mrs Bessie Smith donated the first prize
  • The first prize was donated by Mrs Bessie Smith
  • A man is waiting in the hall
  • Theres a man waiting in the hall
  • They stopped at the end of the corridor
  • At the end of the corridor, they stopped
  • Position
  • Usual vs. Unusual (frequency of structure)

15
BRAVE NEW WORLD
  • A squat grey building of only thirty-four
    stories. Over the main entrance the words,
    Central London Hatchery And Conditioning Centre,
    and in a shield, the World States motto
    COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.
  • The enormous room on the ground floor faced
    towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond
    the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room
    itself, a harsh thn light glared through the
    windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure,
    som pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but
    finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly
    shining porcelain of the laboratory. Wintriness
    responded to wintriness. The overalls of the
    workers were white, their hands gloved with a
    pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was
    frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow
    barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a
    certain rich and living substance, lying along
    the polished tubes like butter, streak after
    luscious streak in long recession down the work
    tables.
  • "And this," said the Director opening the door,
    "is the Fertilizing Room."

http//www.huxley.net/bnw/index.html
16
BRAVE NEW WORLDbyAldous Huxley(1894-1963)
  • Chapter One
  • A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four
    stories. Over the main entrance the words,
    CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE,
    and, in a shield, the World State's motto,
    COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.
  • The enormous room on the ground floor faced
    towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond
    the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room
    itself, a harsh thin light glared through the
    windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure,
    some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but
    finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly
    shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness
    responded to wintriness. The overalls of the
    workers were white, their hands gloved with a
    pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was
    frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow
    barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a
    certain rich and living substance, lying along
    the polished tubes like butter, streak after
    luscious streak in long recession down the work
    tables.
  • "And this," said the Director opening the door,
    "is the Fertilizing Room."
  • Bent over their instruments, three hundred
    Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of
    Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in
    the scarcely breathing silence, the
    absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of
    absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived
    students, very young, pink and callow, followed
    nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director's
    heels. Each of them carried a notebook, in which,
    whenever the great man spoke, he desperately
    scribbled. Straight from the horse's mouth. It
    was a rare privilege. The D. H. C. for Central
    London always made a point of personally
    conducting his new students round the various
    departments.
  • "Just to give you a general idea," he would
    explain to them. For of course some sort of
    general idea they must have, if they were to do
    their work intelligentlythough as little of one,
    if they were to be good and happy members of
    society, as possible. For particulars, as every
    one knows, make for virtue and happiness
    generalities are intellectually necessary evils.
    Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and stamp
    collectors compose the backbone of society.
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com