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Language and Meaning
Betty Birner
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eBook - ePub
Language and Meaning
Betty Birner
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Language and Meaning provides a clear, accessible and unique perspective on the philosophical and linguistic question of what it means to mean. Looking at relationships such as those between literal and non-literal meanings, linguistic form and meaning, and language and thought, this volume tackles the issues involved in what we mean and how we convey it. Divided into five easy-to-read chapters, it features:
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- Broad coverage of semantic, pragmatic and philosophical approaches, providing the reader with a balanced and comprehensive overview of the topic;
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- Frequent examples to demonstrate how meaning is perceived and manipulated in everyday discourse, including the importance of context, scientific studies of human language, and theories of pragmatics;
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- Topics of debate and key points of current theories, including references to ongoing controversies in the field;
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- Annotated further reading, allowing students to explore topics in more detail.
Aimed at undergraduate students with little or no prior knowledge of linguistics, this book is essential reading for those studying this topic for the first time.
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Informations
Chapter 1
Introduction
What is meaning? That sounds like a fairly philosophical question, and it is; but itâs also a linguistic one. We say that life has meaning, but we also say that words have meaning. Is it the same kind of meaning? This book is about the second type of meaning â the meanings of words and sentences. So it wonât help you understand the meaning of life (sorry), but it will help you understand the meaning of the word life, and what happens when two or more people attempt to communicate linguistically.
When we talk to another person, we think of our words as conveying meaning â but a little thought might convince you that this isnât what happens at all. In the most literal sense, when I speak to you, nothing leaves my head and enters yours; nothing is really âconveyedâ except for sound waves. So what is this âmeaningâ that we feel weâre somehow giving to the other person, and how does it get to them? Human relationships are so fundamentally grounded in language and communication that itâs worth considering exactly what meaning is and how it works â as well as what sometimes causes it to go wrong.
In this book, weâll consider what it means to mean. In this first chapter, weâll consider the surprisingly large number of things that the word mean can mean. Weâll look at the difference between linguistic and non-linguistic meaning, and at the difference between the literal meanings of words and sentences and how these can be used to âmeanâ a much greater range of things. Weâll look more broadly at the field of linguistics, the scientific study of human language, and what it can tell us about how linguistic form and meaning are related. In Chapter 2, weâll look at the philosophy of language: the relationship between language and thought, the location and types of meaning, and the relationship between meaning and truth. In Chapter 3, weâll consider the literal meanings of words and sentences, what it really means to know the meaning of a word, how meanings can be represented, and how simple meanings are built up into more complex meanings. In Chapter 4, weâll dig more deeply into the question of how speakers use these literal meanings to convey their intended meanings, which can sometimes be quite different from what theyâve literally said. Weâll see how theories of pragmatics can help to explain how hearers infer what speakers intended, even if what theyâve literally said seems quite different. At the same time, weâll see how this process of inference leaves the door open for these inferences to be mistaken, resulting in miscommunication and misunderstanding: Sometimes our hearer just doesnât get our meaning at all. Chapter 5 will summarize the previous chapters and wrap up.
What does it mean to mean?
To dive right into the deep end of the pool, letâs start with the meaning of meaning. The first thing to notice is that thereâs obviously a difference between the word meaning and what it, well, means â or, to put it another way, what we use it to refer to. (Throughout this book, Iâll use italics for linguistic items like words, so that itâs clear when weâre talking about a word vs. when weâre using it â whatâs known as the âuseâ vs. âmentionâ distinction.)
The verb mean and the related noun meaning, as it turns out, have a surprisingly large number of meanings. Consider the sentences in (1):
- (1)
- What is the meaning of life?
- I didnât mean to hurt you.
- Those dark clouds mean rain is coming.
- Dissimilar means ânot alikeâ.
- By home, I mean my parentsâ house, not my college dorm.
- When I kicked you under the table, I meant that you should stop talking about politics.
- Those sirens mean a tornado has been sighted.
- I mean to go to England before I die.
In (1a), the speaker is talking about philosophical meaning, which can be very roughly paraphrased as âpurposeâ. In (1b), mean could be paraphrased as âintendâ â and the extent to which these first two senses of the word mean are related is a complicated matter: Purpose in some uses can mean intent (as in, e.g., my purpose in going to the store), but not everyone asking about lifeâs meaning is asking whether thereâs an intent behind it. And in (1c), itâs quite clear that weâve left intent behind: Clouds do not intend to tell us that rain is coming. In (1d), the word dissimilar has a fixed meaning that is not dependent on the intent of the person using it; I canât use the word to mean whatever I want. On the other hand, as seen in (1e), I can use home to mean my choice of a limited number of places. In (1f), we get even more intentionality and more freedom, and a less fixed meaning: Kicking my companion under the table can mean quite a range of things in various contexts, limited only by my expectation that the person being kicked will get the message. And what about (1g)? The sirens donât intend to convey anything, so in that sense this sort of meaning is like that in (1c); on the other hand, theyâre a conventional symbol weâve all agreed on, so in that sense itâs like (1d); but then again, by using this siren on this occasion, somebody intends to indicate the sighting of a tornado, so in that sense itâs like (1f). And, finally, in (1h) â a use that appears in some but not all dialects of English â weâve abandoned all conventionality; here the meaning is purely an intent, with no sense of one thing standing for another.
In short, we use the word meaning for everything from intention-free indication, as in (1c), to indication-free intention, as in (1h), with quite a range in between â in addition to philosophical uses like (1a) and totally distinct uses to mean things like âcruelâ or âstingyâ (as in Scrooge was a mean man, which is ambiguous between those two senses).
Setting aside the philosophical sense of mean and its use as an adjective to mean âcruelâ or âstingyâ, we can distinguish two broad categories of meaning based on the degree of intention involved, which philosopher H.P. Grice called ânaturalâ and ânon-naturalâ meaning. Natural meaning is the sort of meaning we see in sentences like Those clouds mean rain or Smoke means fire or That chill in the air means winter is coming. The relation is a natural one, which is to say that nobody intended it to be that way; it just is. There is no intention involved.
Non-natural meaning, on the other hand, is at least to some extent intentional. Somebody has decided that one thing will mean, or indicate, or stand for, another. For example, a red light means âstopâ â but thereâs nothing natural about that meaning. Itâs almost hard to imagine because weâre so used to this correlation between âredâ and âstopâ, but we could perfectly well have decided as a society that green would mean âstopâ and red would mean âgoâ. The meaning is a non-natural one, which in turn means that itâs intentional: Someone, or some group, intends for this correlation to exist.
So which category does language fall into? You may find it counterintuitive, but linguistic meaning is non-natural. Thereâs no automatic, natural relationship between the word song and the type of melodic arrangement it stands for, or between the word dog and the type of canine entity it stands for. After all, dog doesnât mean the same thing in French, Urdu, Chinese, or Swahili, all of which have their own words for dogs. The use of the word dog for this creature is simply a convention that English speakers have tacitly agreed to. The relationship between most words and what they stand for is arbitrary â thereâs no reason the word chair couldnât have ended up meaning âcanine creatureâ â but itâs conventional, meaning everybody who speaks English has in some sense agreed to use that word for that meaning.
Within non-natural meaning, then, we have linguistic meaning and non-linguistic meaning (like the fact that a red light means that you must stop your car). This book is concerned with linguistic meaning â which, as weâll see, is also subject to various degrees of intentionality, but itâs clear that most linguistic meaning is non-natural in that the words and phrases involved bear no automatic relationship to what they stand for.
The one exception is onomatopoeic language, which bears some natural relation to what it represents in that the word âsounds likeâ its meaning. Many words for animal sounds (such as cheep, hiss, or meow) are thought to be onomatopoeic, as are words for sounds like crash or bang. However, even these words differ from language to language; a rooster that says cock-a-doodle-doo in English says kukareku in Russian. So even here, the relationship between the word and its meaning is partly arbitrary and thus non-natural.
Semantic vs. pragmatic meaning: the role of context
Weâve talked about linguistic meaning as being non-natural and thus being subject to some degree of intentionality: That is, when we speak, we intend that our hearer will understand us to have intended to convey a particular meaning. This âintention for our hearer to understand our intentionâ is a crucial aspect of language. It also, of course, leads us down a philosophical rabbit hole, because for language to work, our hearer has to recognize that we intend for them to understand our intention to convey meaning, and we have to intend for them to recognize it, and they have to recognize that we intend that, etc. And yes, it can make your head spin. But thereâs also a difference between my intention that they recognize the conventional meaning of what Iâve said and my intention that they recognize what I meant right now by saying it in this particular context. Confused? Consider these examples:
- (2)
- Dissimilar means ânot alikeâ. (=(1d))
- When I said The pizza is cold, I meant my slice, not yours.
In (2a), the meaning of dissimilar is in some sense fixed; I canât use this word to mean just any old thing. The meanings of words frequently change over the course of time, but Iâm not free to use the word dissimilar to mean âthereforeâ or âaardvarkâ or âtelevisionâ â or, more accurately, Iâm free to use it however I want, but unless I use it for the conventionally accepted meaning, I canât reasonably expect that my hearer will understand what I meant. Most of the time, then, I canât use a word or sentence to mean just any old thing. In some sense, of course, thatâs not quite true (hence the hedge âmost of the timeâ); you actually can use any utterance to mean anything. For example, you can arrange with your spouse before a party that if you say The dessert was delicious it will mean âIâm having a terrible time and I want to go homeâ. But in most situations the meaning of your utterance is constrained by its conventionally accepted meaning.
On the other hand, I do have a certain freedom within that conventionally accepted meaning. In (2b), the pizza means a certain slice of pizza that is salient in the context of utterance, and this opens up the possibility of misunderstanding. The utterance here suggests that thereâs been just such a misunderstanding â that the hearer thought the speaker meant all of the pizza present in the context, whereas the speaker in (2b) is clarifying that they meant only their own slice. And of course if the speaker says The pizza is cold a week later, they will doubtless be talking about another pizza entirely, whereas the use of dissimilar a week from now will still mean ânot alikeâ. For that matter, the word pizza used a week from now will still mean something like âan Italian pie made of a crust and toppings, typically including tomato sauce and mozzarella cheeseâ. But the specific pizza intended by the speaker will differ. That is, pizza will still mean what pizza always means; but what the speaker means by the pizza will be different. Thus, thereâs a difference between word meaning (or sentence meaning) and speaker meaning: The meaning of the word pizza is more or less invariant, while the speakerâs meaning in using that word can vary from context to context.
Meaning that is more or less independent of context (as in the meaning of the word pizza) is called semantic meaning. Meaning that depends on the context is called pragmatic meaning â but be forewarned that this is a rough definition of this important distinction, and weâll be talking about it in great length later on. For example, another way of framing the difference is to say that semantic meaning is truth-conditional and pragmatic meaning is non-truth-conditional. In most cases, the two distinctions overlap. Consider (3):
- (3) Iâm cold.
The conventional, context-independent, semantic meaning of this sentence is (roughly) that the speaker is experiencing a sensation of the ambient temperature being uncomfortably low. This is what it means if uttered today, tomorrow, or next week â here, or in Antarctica, or in Florida â and by me, you, or the President of the U.S. If the speaker is in fact experiencing such a sensation, the sentence is literally true; if they are not, the sentence is literally false. That is to say, the conditions under which it is true â its truth-conditions â are the same regardless of context. This meaning is truth-conditional. (Of course, the person represented by I will vary by speaker; if (3) is uttered by the President of the U.S., thatâs the person who must be cold in order for (3) to be true.)
On the other hand, the speaker could use this semantic meaning to convey any number of additional meanings, which they will count on the hearer to figure out in context. So the speaker in uttering (3) might mean âplease bring me a blanketâ or âclose the windowâ or âturn off the air conditionerâ or âturn on the heatâ or âcuddle up closerâ or âI regret eating this ice creamâ or âyour brother lied when he said the water in this lake was super-warmâ or any of a hundred other things, depending on whoâs saying it to whom and under what conditions. All of these intended meanings are pragmatic, and theyâre non-truth-conditional, which means that you couldnât get away with saying (4):
- (4) When you said Iâm cold just now, that was a lie; youâre not eating ice cream!
Because âI regret eating this ice creamâ isnât part of the truth-conditional meaning of Iâm cold, the fact that youâre not eating ice cream (much less regretting it) doesnât mean youâve said something untrue by saying Iâm cold. Which is to say, you can use the sentence Iâm cold to mean âI regret eating this ice creamâ in a certain context, but whether or not you regret eating ice cream never affects whether the sentence Iâm cold is true or not; it doesnât affect the truth-conditions of the sentence Iâm cold.
Most of the time, ...