READING

 

THREE PERSPECTIVE OF MEANING

1.      Thematic Meaning:

               It refers to what is communicated by the way in which a speaker or a writer organizes the

 message in terms of ordering focus and emphasis .Thus active is different from passive though its

 conceptual meaning is the same. Various parts of the sentence also can be used as subject, object 

or complement to show prominence. It is done through focus, theme (topic) or emotive emphasis. 

Thematic meaning helps us to understand the message and its implications properly. 

For example, the following statements in active and passive voice have same conceptual meaning

 but different communicative values. For the example :

·         She read the book in the library

·         The book is read by her in the library

2.                  Conceptual meaning 

               is also called logical or cognitive meaning. It is the basic propositional meaning which corresponds to 

the primary dictionary definition. Such a meaning is stylistically neutral and objective as opposed to other kinds

 of associative meanings.

·         For example, a part of the conceptual meaning of ‘Needle” may be “thin”, “sharp” or “instrument”.

The organization of conceptual meaning is based on two structural principles- Contrastiveness and the principle of structure. The conceptual meanings can be studied typically in terms of contrastive features.

 

3.      Associative Meaning

The meaning of word is affected by the context, background, time and the culture realities of the users of language. Associative meaning can be any of the following :

·         Connotative Meaning, is the communicative value of an expression over and above its purely conceptual content. It is something that goes beyond mere referent of a word and hints at its attributes in the real world. It is something more than the dictionary meaning. For example : Old age ‘Woman’ - ‘Non-trouser wearing or sari wearing’ in Indian context must have seemed definite connotation in the past. Present ‘Woman’ Salwar/T-shirt/Jeans wearing.

·         Collocative Meaning, is the meaning which a word acquires in the company of certain words. Words collocate or co-occur with certain words only. For example : Pretty’ and ‘handsome’ indicate ‘good looking’. The word ‘pretty’ collocates with – girls, woman, village, gardens, flowers, etc. On the other hand, the word ‘handsome’ collocates with ‘boys’ men, etc. so ‘pretty woman’ and ‘handsome man’

·         Affective Meaning,  some linguists it refers to emotive association or effects of words evoked in the reader, listener. It is what is conveyed about the personal feelings or attitude towards the listener. For the example : “I am terribly sorry but if you would be so kind as to lower your voice a little”

·         Reflected Meaning, Reflected meaning arises when a word has more than one conceptual meaning or multiple conceptual meaning. In such cases while responding to one sense of the word we partly respond to another sense of the word too. For the example : a ghost is more frequent and familiar in no religious sense.

·         Social Meaning, The meaning conveyed by the piece of language about the social context of its use is called the social meaning. The decoding of a text is dependent on our knowledge of stylistics and other variations of language. For the example : “I ain’t done nothing” The line tells us about the speaker and that is the speaker is probably a black American, underprivileged and uneducated.