UC 00902:

MEANING
IN COMMUNICATION
CONTEXT

LESSON 1:
What is Meaning?

WHAT IS MEANING?

Language without
meaning is
meaningless
(Roman Jakobson).

WHAT IS MEANING?

A noise that you make when you speak or
a scribble that you produce when
you write words in English/Malay or a
sign-language gesture you make are
physical objects that convey meanings,
they are about something
WHAT IS MEANING?

We use language to communicate, to
talk about:
things in the world,
people and their properties,
relations between people,
events,
in short about the way the world is,
should be, could have been
WHAT IS MEANING?

The property of aboutness of linguistic
signs (or symbols) is one of the defining
properties of natural languages, it is what a
semantic theory of natural languages tries to
capture


WHAT IS MEANING?

Meanings are in people
Communication does not consist of the
transmission of meanings, but of the
transmission of messages
Meanings are not in the message; they are
in the message-users
Words do not mean at all; only people
mean


























WHAT IS MEANING?

People can have similar meanings only to
the extent that they have had, or can
anticipate having, similar experiences
Meanings are never fixed; as experience
changes, so meanings change
No two people can have exactly the same
meaning for anything (David Berlo)

WHAT IS STUDY OF MEANING?

Semantics is the scientific study of meaning
communicated through language.
Semantics is the study of the relation between
form and meaning
Semantics is the study of the relationships
between signs and symbols and what they
represent.


WHAT IS SEMANTICS?

Semantics is the branch of linguistics that
deals with the study of meaning, changes
in meaning, and the principles that govern
the relationship between sentences or
words and their meanings.

WHAT IS SEMANTICS?

An understanding of semantics is
essential to the study of language
acquisition (how language users acquire a
sense of meaning, as speakers and
writers, listeners and readers).
It is also essential to the study of
language change (how meanings alter
over time).
WHAT IS SEMANTICS?

It is important for understanding language in
social contexts, as these are likely to affect
meaning, and for understanding varieties of
language and effects of style.
The study of semantics includes the study of
how meaning is constructed, interpreted,
clarified, obscured, illustrated, simplified,
negotiated, contradicted, and paraphrased.

Some important areas of semantic theory or related
subjects include these:
Symbol and referent
Conceptions of meaning
Words and lexemes
Denotation, connotation, implication
Pragmatics
Ambiguity
Metaphor, simile and symbol
Semantic fields
Synonym, antonym and hyponym
Collocation, fixed expression and idiom
Semantic change and etymology
Polysemy
Homonymy, homophones and homographs
Lexicology and lexicography
Thesauruses, libraries and Web portals
Epistemology
Colour
In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that is
devoted to the study of meaning, as borne on the
syntactic levels of words, phrases, sentences,
and sometimes larger units of discourse,
generically referred to as texts.

To understand language we need to know the
meaning of words and the morphemes that
compose them. We also must know how the
meanings of words combine into phrases and
sentence meanings. Finally, we must consider
context when determining meaning.

Phonetics studies the
physical side of linguistic
utterancesthe
articulation and perception
of speech sounds
(articulatory, acoustic and
auditory).
How to make the sound of
/k/ , /g/, /b/, /p/
Phonology is the study of
the sound patterns of human
language.
How the sound of /b/ and /p/
make a difference in
English [bad] and [pad],
How the sound of /p/ and
/d/ make a difference in
Malay [apa] and [ada],
[katak] and [kotak]

Morphology is the study of
the structure of words and
the smallest meaning
bearing units and how they
combine into words.
Malay
Mengasihi
meN + kasih + I
Termakan (ter+makan)
meN,teR,di dll
English
apples (apple + s)
writes (write + s)

Syntax is the study of the
formation of sentences, how
words are combined to larger
units than words, to phrases
and sentences that are well-
formed strings in a given
language
Malay:
Ayam makan jagung
Jagung makan ayam
Jagung dimakan ayam
English: A letter written by
John
John writes letter

Semantic is the study of
the linguistic meaning of
morphemes, words,
phrases, and sentences
English:This room is hot.
It is taking about the high
temperature in the room


Pragmatics is the study of
how context affects
meaning.
English: This room is hot
In other words:
-please open the windows
-please on the fan
-who switch off the air-con?

QUESTION 1

Whats meaning?
QUESTION 2
2 examples of phonological differences in Malay
and English
2 examples of morphological differences in Malay
and English
2 examples of syntax differences in Malay and
English