Nature of language

Nature of Language

• What is Language• What is Meaning• Words Have Many Types of Meanings• Denotations and Connotations Contextual and

Structural Sound Meanings• The Attributes of Effective Oral Language• Language is clear ( velar, accurate, simple, and

understandable )• Language is direct and conversational• Language is appropriate to the listeners, the

occasion, the speech purpose and the speaker’s personality

What is Language

• May refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication. The scientific study of language in any of its senses is called linguistics.

What is Language• The approximately 3000–6000 languages that are

spoken by humans today are the most salient examples, but natural languages can also be based on visual rather than auditive stimuli, for example in sign languages and written language.

• A language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information.

• The English word derives from Latin lingua, "language, tongue." This metaphoric relation between language and the tongue exists in many languages and testifies to the historical prominence of spoken languages.

• When used as a general concept, "language" refers to the cognitive faculty that enables humans to learn and use systems of complex communication.

What is Meaning

• A passage that explains the meaning of a term (a word, phrase or other set of symbols), or a type of thing.

• The term to be defined is the definiendum (plural definienda).

• A term may have many different senses or meanings. For each such specific sense, a definiens (plural definientia) is a cluster of words that defines that term.

What is Meaning

• A definition may be descriptive of the general use meaning, or stipulative of the speaker's immediate intentional meaning.

• A precising definition extends the descriptive dictionary definition (lexical definition) of a term for a specific purpose by including additional criteria that narrow down the set of things meeting the definition.

Types of Meaning

• Literal meaning - the sentence means what it says. Also known as 'utterance' meaning (Griffiths).

• Logical meaning - the meaning of the sentence is determined by (is a part of) a set of logical inferences, such as composition, subordination, etc. Also called 'taxis'. (Kies)

Types of Meaning

• Denotative meaning - the sentence means what it is about. The 'reference' of a sentence, as opposed to its 'sense'.

• Sematical meaning - meaning is truth• Positivist meaning - the sentence means what

it says that can be empirically confirmed or falsified

Types of Meaning

• Pragmatic meaning - the relationship between signs and their users.

• Intentional meaning - the sentence means what the author intended it to say. Also known as "sender's meaning"

• Connotative meaning - the sentence means what readers think about when they read it.

Types of Meaning

• Social meaning - "what is communicated of the social circumstances of language use"

• Metaphorical meaning - the meaning is determined by metaphor, and not actual reference

• Emotive meaning - related to connotative - the type of emotion the sentence invokes

Types of Meaning

• Functional meaning - the sentence means what it is used for, what it does

• Type meaning - the sentence's meaning is related to what it doesn't say, to the range of possible words or sentences that could be said instead

• Deictic meaning - meaning is determined with reference to the situation or context in which the word is used.

Types of Meaning

• Accent - the manner in which the word is pronounced or emphasized can cnage its meaning.

• Intralingual meaning - the relationship between different signs.

• Thematic meaning - "what is communicated by the way in which the message is organized in terms of order and emphasis"

Connotation and Denotation

• Denotation - tends to be described as the definitional, 'literal', 'obvious' or 'commonsense' meaning of a sign. In the case of linguistic signs, the denotative meaning is what the dictionary attempts to provide.

• Connotation - is used to refer to the socio-cultural and 'personal' associations (ideological, emotional etc.) of the sign. These are typically related to the interpreter's class, age, gender, ethnicity and so on. Signs are more 'polysemic' - more open to interpretation - in their connotations than their denotations. Denotation is sometimes regarded as a digital code and connotation as an analogue code

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