Definition of Linguistic Meaning - Literature review Example

Linguistic Meaning Introduction to linguistic meaning - If we have to understand what is linguistic meaning we need to know what linguistics is. Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The different aspects covered by linguistics are structure (morphology and syntax), sounds (phonology), and meaning (semantics). A study of linguistics also takes one into the history of the language. It also seeks to explore the relation of languages to each other. A Study of linguistics is important because human beings are characterized in a way because of their sophisticated ability to use language and therefore a study of linguistics is essential to understand human experience. According to Russ Rymer1 linguistics is a field which is most researched upon in the academic arena. It has been influenced by the works of eminent poets, theologians, philosophers, philologists, psychologists, biologists, anthropologists, and neurologists. Studying linguistic meaning is about studying the meaning of words, phrases or sentences. When people communicate with one another, they strive to bring out some meaning in their communications, either directly through the words they use or indirectly to what they imply in their choice of words. If you take the word ‘Mean’ as an example, there are many interpretations to this word given the kind of sentences it is used. Let’s take some examples here. If you look at the sentences “I mean what I say” and “What he did was no mean accomplishment”, in both contexts the meaning of the word ‘Mean’ changes. Linguistic meaning involves the study of the meaning of words and other symbols used in a language. Linguistic meaning is studied in philosophy such as the in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind. It is also part of the research in areas such as semiotics, logic and communication theory. Taking the field of linguistics itself, the study of the meaning of linguistics is food in its sub field – semantics. Semantics studies conventional meanings and how these meanings are assembled. It is eminent philosophers such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, who gave shape to linguistic meaning concepts such as the nature of meaning, the definition of meaning and the elements and types that come under linguistic meaning. Their theory is also known as the AAA framework. According to their theory, meaning is a relationship between two concepts which are signs and the kinds of things they mean. One aspect in the relation of meaning conjures up something else in the mind. A look at the linguistics approach to meaning The linguistic approach to meaning is covered by the semantic approach, the semiotic approach and the pragmatic approach. Semantic approach: The semantic approach looks to find out how words, phrases, and sentences can have meaning. This is done by dividing words into their sense and reference. In a word sense helps to determine the object that is being referred to and reference in the word which is referred. For example, if we take the sentence ‘ The girl next door’, the word girl refers to a specific person and sense here is the piece of information which tells us that we are referring to a female person living next door and not someone across the street. Semiotic approach: The semiotic approach involves the study of signs and symbols, both in their individuality and when grouped in sign systems. It involves understanding how meaning is constructed and understood by classifying signs and sign systems according to the way in which they are transmitted. In this approach, the process of carrying meaning is based on the use of codes. These codes may be individual sounds or letters that humans use to form words, the body movements they make to show attitude or emotion, or even something as general as the clothes they wear. Pragmatic approach: The pragmatic approach studies meaning from two contexts which are the linguistic contexts and situational contexts. When studying linguistic context we refer to the language surrounding a particular phrase. For example, if a sentence ‘Sally went to the park’ is preceded by the sentence ‘Sally’s mother took her to the park’, the meaning of the first sentence changes, and this is what is meant by linguistic context. In situational context, it is every non-linguistic factor that affects the meaning of a phrase. For example a statement such as ‘The room is hot’, could mean a statement of a fact or it could mean to turn on the fan. Trends and theories developed on linguistic meaning Meaning is based on of the word used in a sentence and the context in which the word is used. The types of meaning depends on the type of the thing that is being represented, which could be things in the world which have a meaning, things in the world that are also signs of other things in the world, and so, are always meaningful and finally things that are always necessarily meaningful, such as words, and other nonverbal symbols. There are many theories surrounding meaning and these include the following: Idea theories of meaning – This theory states that meanings are ideas. These ideas could be about something external or something internal to a person’s mind, they could be something real or imaginary and are basically mental representations. Within the theories of meaning there were strong idea theories and weak ideas theories. Strong idea theories refer to meanings as ideas of mental representations. Strong idea theories are supported by David Hume. According to him meanings were kinds of imaginable entities. However, these points were contradicted by many people. John Locke considered that all ideas are imaginable objects of sensation. They are also unimaginable objects of reflection. According to him in his Essay “Concerning Human Understanding” words not just bring out the signs of ideas, but they also denote the lack of certain ideas. The theory of meaning as based on ideas was criticized on the whole by later philosophers because, it was not able to account for the different variations within a general meaning. Take for example the word flower, if one were to think of this word one would probably conjure up the image of a rose, lotus, lily, jasmine or any one such type of a flower and so not all type of flowers. Looking at this example another way around we can consider the image of a rose which comes to mind when we think of the word ‘flower’ does not represent all the species of flowers available. Another point of criticism against the idea theory on meaning is in the context of non-lexical items (which are also meaningful words), there are no meaningful images associated to them. For example, if we take the word "the", it has a meaning, but it is not possible for anyone to imagine the meaning of this word or to find a mental representation on this word. Another issue is that of composition, which poses a difficulty because it is difficult to explain how words and phrases combine to form sentences, on the theory that ideas form the basis of meaning. Weak idea theories were mainly supported by cognitive scientists Eleanor Rosch and George Lakoff. They suggested that the different class of meaning of a particular word, can be understood on the basis of the ideas that we get about the ideal member(s) of the class. For example if we take the word ‘Bird’, we may think of the image of a pigeon as a bird which represents this word to us. As we learn more, we will start to compare all the different types of birds and categorize them according to how much they resemble our idea of a bird. In this context the image of a robin would be closer to our idea of a bird, but the image of an ostrich or penguin would be in the latter fringes of our idea. This theory seems to overcome much of the criticisms associated with idea theory of meaning. Truth theories to meaning – This theory is put forth by philosophers who feel that meaning come about based on the truth conditions involve in the context. They feel that meaning comes from by reference to actual things in the world around them. This aspect is very much advocated by were the logical positivists. According to them the meaning of a statement comes from how it is verified. The theory of Logical positivism only allows for use of logical tautologies and first-person observations from experience. It did not take into account any metaphysical and normative ideas of meaning. The proponents of this theory did find it difficult to defend the strict principles of this theory, but never-the-less, the theory gave a powerful vision of the possibilities for modern knowledge. In trying to understand the truth theories to meaning, we must also make an attempt to understand the concepts of logic and reality. Modern logic finds its evolution with the work of German logician Gottlob Frege in the late nineteenth century. His work along with the work of George Boole and Charles Sanders Peirce (contemporaries) helped to advance the concept of logic. In their understanding of logic, they used sentential connectives such as like and, or and if-then and also quantifiers such as all and some. Their logical deductions were based on set theory. In Gottlob Frege's essay ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ (now usually translated as On Sense and Reference), Gottlob Frege's states the theory that the meaning of a word lies is based on the sense which arises from the word. According to Gottlob Frege, if we consider a name we refer to the meaning of the name as the thing it refers to. This is not actually so, as can be seen in a small example. Take the situation of two different names which refer to the same object. In this case let’s take the names Hesperus and Phosphorus. These names are given to the morning star and the evening star, but both the names refer to the same object - Venus. If we consider them that both names have the same meaning then we can say, that, "Hesperus is Hesperus", which is not very logical. The logic theory of meaning of words was further expanded by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead. Their theories are explained in their work ‘Principia Mathematica’, which is an attempt to produce formal language, based on which the truth that mathematical statement could be derived from first principles. Bertrand Russell did defer from Gottlob Frege on many points and these were his sense-reference distinctions and the concept that language gave a fundamental importance to philosophy. Russell’s explanation of linguistic meanings revolved around developing formal logic as a means of removing he confusions caused by ordinary language. This will enable the creation of a perfectly transparent medium in which to conduct traditional philosophical argument. He used the theories which he developed in work ‘Principia Mathematica’ as the basis for his explanation of all possible true statements. He calls this theory as logical atomism. According to Frege and Russell, if we wanted to state that an expression is meaningful, what we are doing is stating that there are some conditions of experience that exist. These condition show that the expression is true. This theory called the ‘Verificationist Theory of meaning, was brought out in the early 20th century by the Vienna Circle (this circle consists of eminent philosophers who formed the group of logical positivists.) The next most influential approach in linguistics meanings is sketched by Donald Davidson. He brings out two important points in his collection of essays ‘Truth and Meaning’ published in 1967. According to him, It should be possible to put down any learnable language in a finite form, even though there are infinite numbers of expressions in the language. If by using finite ways it is not possible to state the language, what can be concluded is that the language cannot be learnt by means of finite, empirical methods which are the way in which human beings learn their languages. What Donald Davidson means is that if is possible to use a finite system of axioms, it is possible to give the meanings to an infinite number of sentences. He propounded the theory that putting forth the meaning of a sentence is equivalent to putting forth its truth conditions. He propounded the theory that it should be possible for any language to be explained using a set of distinct grammatical features together with a lexicon. This theory is the first one to systematically bring out truth-conditional semantics. He proposed the process of simply translating natural languages into first-order predicate calculus in order to reduce meaning to a function of truth. Looking into the works of Saul Kripke is vital to understanding the theory of reference in meanings. He studied the relation between sense and reference as a way of dealing with possible and actual situations. He stated that the reference of a proper name is closely connected to its referent. However, the sense of the proper name is not connected to its referent. Take for example the name ‘Hesperus’ which refers to morning star. The name means the morning star, but it also refers to the morning star in imaginary cases and worlds in which it is not the evening star. This brings out the situation where we can understand part of the meaning of a name as some particular thing that the name refers to. Another point to be noted is that the meaning of a name also arises from a particular situation. The theory on linguistic meaning from Kripke is elaborated from the work of ordinary language philosophers Paul Grice and Keith Donnellan and he tries to bring in the distinction between speaker's meaning and semantic meaning. According to him, the speaker's meaning is what the speaker intends to refer when he or she says something, but the semantic meaning is the meaning of the speaker’s words according to the language. Criticisms on the truth theory of meaning There are criticisms over the truth-theories of meaning. Most truth theories are criticized because of their formal sense of nature in practice and in principles. The principles of formal thinking in truth theories on meaning are attacked by informalists. According to them language is formed by the speakers of the language and so cannot be put under some formal principles. Practice of formalism in truth theories on meaning is attacked by informalists because they observe that in formal languages there is a failure to capture the expressive power of natural languages These have been brought out by W.V. Quin in his essay Two Dogmas of Empiricism"., in which he attacks the notion of verification as a point leading to meanings .He criticized verification because it was based on the distinction between analytic and synthetic. He laid stress on the idea of studying the synonyms in signs and also put the concept that the unit of analysis of meaning should be based on the entire body of statements which should be taken as a collective, and not taken by individual statements. Other limitation of the truth theory in meaning is the limitation of truth-conditions. The truth-conditional theories of meaning only made sense of statements, but could not give any explanation for the lexical parts of a statement. This limitation was admitted by those truth-conditional theorists such as Tarski who felt that it was the truth-conditions of a whole statement which brought out the meaning of the parts of statements. The truth theory on meanings does not account for of statements which do not have any truth-conditions at all. If we take the word ‘Hello’ as an example, it has no truth condition, because it does not inform the listener anything about the state of affairs in the world. This is because different propositions contain in them different grammatical moods. There are also the criticisms on the truth theory brought out by deflationists. According to them truth has no serious meaning or function in a discourse. If we were to take two sentences ‘It’s true that Anna ate the bananas’ and ‘Anna ate the bananas’, as example, to the deflationists both sentences are the same. This is because deflationists do not consider truth as an account for meanings. Finally the truth theory is criticized because over the past century, many forms of logic have been developed same of which are called modal logics. These forms of logic are not dependent solely on the notions of truth and false. They bring out the concept of meaning as a theory based on the analysis of how certain logical connectives such as "if-then" works with respect to the terms of necessity and possibility. Concepts in Montague grammar lay emphasis on modal logics. The modal logic system has been a successful one because it is able to capture the natural meaning of connectives like if-then, in a much better way than it is possible for an ordinary, truth-functional logic. Other theories Theory of Inferential role semantics – This theory goes against the truth-conditional semantics put forth by Davidson. Much of the work on inferential role semantics is given by Michael Dummett. According to him, if we look at semantics as having a basis on assertion conditions it helps to avoid a number of difficulties that arise when dealing with truth-conditional semantics. Inferential role semantics is an approach to the theory of meaning which is much influenced by the idea of identifying meaning with use ( this was actually Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy) . In some version of the theory, there is an emphasis on the representation's role in the mind of the agent, while in other meaning is derived from factors external to the agent. W. Woods, Gilbert Harman, Paul Horwich, and Ned Block were people chiefly involved in propounding this theory. It is a theory which opposes the concepts of truth-conditional semantics. Theory of deconstruction – This theory is propagated by Jacques Derrida. In his theory he concludes that sentences have no meaning at all. This means there is no final or settled meaning that can be derived in a non-metaphorical language. In his analysis of linguistic meaning, there is no thought created first in the mind and them associated with words. It is the other way around, it is the words which are of primary importance, they are the only reality. Derrida used this theory as a way of understanding and comprehending the textural contexts in which words are used. Theory of meaning through reference – This theory states that meaning of words comes from their references. This is because words are actually the mechanisms, by which we can make sense of thoughts, emotions and sense impressions. Words have the power to bring out our emotions and can bring out complex chains of understanding under very simple statements. They have the power to bring out violent reactions to concepts, which are really not experienced personally and which are abstracts as can be seen in a word like ‘Terrorist’. All this is possible because of the reference power of words. The meaning of words comes from what they refer. Reference constitutes an integral part of linguistic philosophy. The theory of meaning through reference is part of the ideas o meaning by Wittgenstein. It was later developed by Peter Strawson and John Searle. According to them name and reference can be established by a cluster of descriptions. However, this does not explain all because, a word may acquire references without being properly understood, and names may not require any descriptions. In an answer to this was the approach developed by Saul Kripke, wherein he propounded that Naming is introduced by dubbing. People who are not present at a dubbing will simply absorb a word. The word is then used by others. This theory brings out the concept of using chains (also called d-chains) and the concept of chains has with it several advantages. Firstly the chains are free of their first use and they are also independent from those who make use of them. The d-chains make it possible to allow name substitution. These chains could denote things which are basically meaningless and false, but they can also denote things which are meaningful and true. Here the meaning of the word arises from certain references made by the speaker. Therefore, it is possible to accept both the linguistic and non- linguistic associations ade by the speaker in order to forge a link between language and the world. Theory of meaning from culture: In this theory meanings of words can also comes from the kind of societies which use the words. Languages of primitive tribes have words which have come about because of some form of misunderstanding to their surroundings. There are words used in a non-literal way and words which have gender such as male and female. However this theory fails to hold well, when the language is translated into another language. So we cannot totally say that the meaning of words is dependent on the culture that used the words. It is therefore partly dependent on the culture because even when using translation, the translation is only a guide to a different linguistic terrain, to a world which recognized slightly differently from the original language. Conclusion What is understood from the attempts of many philosophers in their attempts to understand linguistic meaning is that no single theory which can explain the meaning of meaning. We have gone across a number of theories in this essay, in trying to understand linguistic meaning. These include the theory of ideas on meaning, the theory of truth, the theory of inferential role semantics, the theory of deconstruction, the theory of culture. All these theories are development from their predecessor, which is some way had a defect in trying to bring abut an understanding of linguistic meaning. What can be concluded is that sustainable work has been done by eminent philosophers in the area of linguistic meaning. The understanding of linguistic meaning is an evolutionary process and s it is not possible to find out a single theory on where and how meaning can be sought. The theories on meaning today and far more sophisticated than the earlier ones and they do explain to a great extent linguistic meaning. Still there is room fro some doubts and clarification for which some more analysis are required. It is through constant such analysis that we may eventually try to find the one single theory which will explain the meaning if meaning. References Akmajian, Adrian, Richard Demers, Ann Farmer, and Robert Harnish (1995), Linguistics: An introduction to language and communication, Allan, Keith., ( 1986), Linguistic Meaning. 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