Linguistics & Semantics

Lesson 5: Semantics

Aspects of Meaning: Connotations and Denotations

Sometimes word meanings are somewhat like game trails. So we have a new word when one of the main processes will be applied commonly enough in a particular instance. This new process can originate in a real world a connotation or a denotation: the former refers to the further meanings that a certain word evokes while the latter refers to the basic, literal meaning of some word.

Therefore ‘denotation’ is the set of elements in the real world picked out by a linguistic expression ( the word ‘dog’ with all its relations); connotation, on the other hand, includes the set of associations (personal or communal) that are evoked by the use of a word (‘earth’ connotes safety, fertility, stability; ‘sea’ denotes a large body of water but connotes a sense of danger, instability etc).

When we analyse word meanings we should distinguish two separate concepts called ‘denotational and connotational meaning’. The denotational meaning gives us the basic meaning of a word on conceptual level (this is a dictionary definition). The connotational meanings can be created thanks to different factors and they turn out to be more problematic. One aspect concerning the connotational meanings is the social meaning which varies between age-groups sexes social classes and cultures. Dialect can be a good example.

Walking along the street you might listen to a conversation between two young boys or girls. ‘ Get’ut o’ere ‘andsome bloke’, ‘Get out of here handsome boy’. The dialects carry certain connotations and in these examples we can understand to what social status the speakers belong. In the first case the speaker is RP and well-educated; in the second case the speaker is low educated and he belongs to lower class.

Even affective meaning is in a close accordance with connotational meaning referring to attitudes that are reflected towards the hearer or the subject by speaker. Emotive overtones are important and can also be achieved by derivation (see the diminutive or argumentative suffixes which add an emotive effect to otherwise neutral word. This happens above all to Italian language or German language).

Moreover words can carry emotive meanings, for instance, the phonetic structure of a certain word can raise emotive effects (onomatopoeic words may strengthen the suggestive power). Connotations change and vary and can be simply classified in the same way as denotational meanings are classified in a dictionary. However they cause problems in cross cultural communication and our emotions as well as our culture will weld certain ideas and associations together with certain words. We must say that without connotational meaning communication would be quite impossible altogether.

  1  2  3  4  5  6  7