Meaning in semantics is the objects or concept that a word or phrase denotes, or that which a sentence says.
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The field of semantics is often understood as a branch of linguistics, but this is not strictly true. Basic or non-idealized meaning as a type of semantics is a branch of psychology and ethics and reflects the original use of the term "meaning" as understood early in the 20th century by Lady Welby after her daughter had translated the term "semantics" from French. On the other hand, meaning in so far is it was later objectified by not considering particular situations and the real intentions of speakers and writers examines the ways in which words, phrases, and sentences can seem to have meaning. Objectified semantics is contrasted with communication-focused semantics where understanding the intent and assumptions of particular speakers and writers is primary as in the idea that people mean and not words, sentences or propositions. An underlying difference is that where causes are identified with relations or laws then it is normal to objectify meaning and consider it a branch of linguistics, while if causes are identified with particular agents, objects, or forces as if to cause means to influence as most historians and practical people assume, then real or non-objectified meaning is primary and we are dealing with intent or purpose as an aspect of human psychology, especially since human intent can be and often is independent of language and linguistics.
Since meaning, linguistics, and semantics are often understood with the help of words like "denotation" and "connotation" one feels obliged to have to discuss them. but one should be very careful about using the terms. While the original definitions were introduced by the philosopher John Stuart Mill during the 19th century, they have largely been replaced in ordinary usage. For Mill denotation meant reference and he allowed that words, collocations, and sentences could do the refering or denoting, but in more realistic terms today individual persons do the referring, and denotation tends to mean the normal or traditional use of a word as contrasted with various other associations with words which are called connotations. Nevertheless, many philosophers still use the old definitions as if something as passive as words could still be active enough to refer to something. Actually, reference is a pschological process and as such has little or nothing to do with meaning, denotation, or semantics. Connotations are associations which people make with words. "Normal connotation" is modern denotation and can be compared or contrasted with "abnormal connotation" and "value connotation".
We are all familiar with how good or bad reputation can encourage or discourage us from reading or studying about certain people, positions, or philosophies even before we have studied them. This is normally called pre-judgment or prejudice. To determine whether a reputation is deserved we normally have to carry out extensive and balanced research into human intent and assumptions in psychology, and in the sphere of language and linguistics where this research tends to focus not only on the differences between denotation and connotation, but especially on the presence and often tenacious character of value connotation, that is, the good or bad associations we make with words. Re-definition can change denotation for some people, but value connotation almost always remains, and is merely re-directed at a different target. Unfortunately, while dictionaries mention the most common denotations or main meanings we associate with words they normally ignore value connotation. Indeed, it is value connotation or the effect of using it which results in denotation becoming prejudicial, even denotation which is imagined to be fair, neutral or objective. Indeed, much rhetoric is based on selecting words more for their value associations than for their denotations, and to expose and correct this bad habit it is normally wise to focus on the most likely intent and assumptions of particular people than to imagine that words have meaning in themselves or that either meaning or language can be genuinely objective, since in that process we are likely to forget the existence and dominating character of value connotation which is subjective in a bad sense, that is, which makes persuasion more an aspect of rhetoric and deception rather than judging people, positions and philosophy more by weight of evidence or legitimate argumentation.
In order to better recognize and understand the character and danger of value connotation it is useful to shift our source of information from dictionaries which largely ignore value connotation more to the use of a thesaurus, which carefully distinguishes between good and bad connotation which human beings associate with words. In fact, it is the difficulty of avoiding words with value connotations which makes the claim that dictionary meaning is or can be objective questionable, since it is rarely the full story in actual usage, and an audience's ignorance of value connotation almost always makes it more vulnerable to persuasion by factors other than evidence and argument, thus often helping to encourage less-than-honorable use of rhetoric and persuasion.
Meaning as intent seems to be the oldest use of the word and goes back to Anglo-Saxon and still exists in German as an association made with the verb "meinen" as to think or intend. To repeat, the practical value of focusing on the likely intent and assumptions of speakers is that it can often expose the use of value connotation as rhetoric. Indeed, rhetoric is a form of miscommunication because one-sidedness is often concealed. If it is exposed it can be easier to guard against. Some rhetoric is overt, but the most dangerous, that is, the most persuasive kinds, often seem fair or positive by subtly using the views or language of the victim plus value connotation to disguise imbalance or falsehood. In fact, many words inconspicuously suggest something good or bad and are employed as a substitute for evidence or argument. Thus, wary readers when faced with rhetoric wisely ask "What do you mean?" That is, what is your aim or purpose? If prejudgment or attempted persuasion is deliberate, then it can create ethical problems. It was Sir Francis Bacon in his criticism of four idols which need to be overcome for truth-focused, non-idealized science and technology to best develop who has been most influential in making this point and in discouraging misleading rhetoric. Meaning as intent is subjective in seeming or being mental and such seems to be a generally uncontested fact, but subjectivity as using pejorative denotation or connottion especially about basic classification as in philosophy as reflected in expressions like "metaphysical". "psychologistic", and "meaningless" are subjective in a second sense and reprehensible or immoral by blocking fair or any access to other points of view. What is ethically most unfortunate is "softsoaping" the victim with a tone or manner which the deceived person would not accept if expressed by plain, genuinely balanced expression using a normal tone of voice. In the opinion of supporters of non-objectified semantics and meaning as intent both the practice of using one word "refutations" as in blatant rhetoric and its often more effective soft spoken cousin should be replaced by neutral and inclusive classification or by contrasting views to create a balanced effect between different positions in philosophy and science, thus allowing for more fair understanding of all points of view, with each perspective fairly treated, that is, which avoid imbalance, prejudgment, rhetoric, and other misuse of psychology or language. After fair and inclusive basic classification has been introduced then one can do additional research and try to find out which point of view is most probably true. But prejudgment is shameful even when not immoral. See S.I. Hayakawa, The Use and Misuse of Language, 1962 [1942].
It was during the 1930s that some well-intentioned philosophers turned against intent-based semantics because the notion of intent seemed mental or "psychologistic". But this was ironic because it obscured the fact that their own basic assumptions tended to use classification which rejected most or all other positions as "metaphysical", "psychologistic", or "meaningless" without sufficient accompanying evidence or argument to justify this form of exclusion by prejudicial description, a practice which was truly unfair and misleading about many of the positions they opposed including intent-based semantics whose supporters were seriously looking for ways to become more fair and less rhetorical. Negative reaction to meaning as intent, especially among logical positivists of the period, was also influenced by opposition to Korzybski's much abused theory of General Semantics, when the intent-based approach to meaning was much older, deeper and almost certainly more valid. See the works of Sir Fancis Bacon and the two ladies most responsible for introducing the term "semantics" into English as theory of meaning, namely, Victoria, Lady Welby and one of her daughters. More recently John T. Blackmore has attempted to revive resistance to rhetoric and those philosophical, linguistic, and semantic positions which seem to rest most heavily on them by re-emphasizing both the fundamental character of meaning as intent and its use in exposing and helping to replace rhetoric and other misleading practices by pointing out the slanted character of value connotation and the falsehood that both connotation and denotation can be objective or that the alleged meaning of words can or should take precedence over what people, the users of language, mean. People can be relatively objective in the sense of being fair, but the many different meanings associated with the word "absolute" make it hard to give a simple answer about whether absolute objectivity is possible about meaning or language, even if words themselves could determine the meanings or associations made with them, which hardly seems possible. As for conventions and habits of expression they have value, but in particular circumstance where a speaker or writer may be using other assumptions than we do, then inquiring after intent can be vital if maximum communication is to take place.
In linguistics the fields normally most closely associated with objectified meaning are linguistic semantics and some aspects of pragmatics. Objectified semantics deals most directly with what words or phrases generally appear to mean, On the other hand, non-objectified semantics and other types of pragmatics deal with how author intent and the environment may actually help encourage rhetoric-free use of language. Sub-branches of linguistics like syntax and morphology, however, often seem to influence the creation and use of objectified meaning. Furthermore, the syntax of a language allows a good deal of information to be conveyed even when the specific words used are not known to the listener, and a language's morphology can allow a listener to uncover the general uses of a word by examining the morphemes that make it up.
The field of semantics in so far is it is objectified by not considering particular situations and the real intentions of speakers and writers examines the ways in which words, phrases, and sentences can have meaning. This type of semantics is contrasted with communication-focused semantics where understanding the intent and assumptions of particular speakers and writers is primary as in the idea that people mean and not words, sentences or proposition. An underlying difference is that where causes are identified with relations or laws then it is normal to objectify meaning, while if causes are identified with particular agents, objects, or forces as if to cause means to influence as most historians and practical people assume, then real or non-objectified meaning is primary.
Objectified semantics in much linguistics (following Gottlob Frege) usually divides words into their sense and reference. The reference of a word is the thing it refers to: In the sentence "Give the guy sitting next to you a turn", the guy refers to a specific person, in this case the male one sitting next to you. This person is the phrase's reference. The sense, on the other hand, is that part of the expression that helps us to determine the thing it refers to. In the example above, the sense is every piece of information that helps to determine that the expression is referring to the male human sitting next to you and not any other object. This includes any linguistic information as well as situational context, environmental details, and so on. On the other hand, following J.S. Mill, sense is often called connotation and reference denotation. Furthermore, in semantics outside of both linguistics and philosophy, denotation normally means the primary use of a word and connotation means the associations made with the word, including value connotations which indicate whether the author is praising or criticizing what is denoted or referred to.
In objectified semantics there are at least four different kinds of sentences. Some of them are truth-sensitive, which are called indicative sentences. However, other kinds of sentences are not truth-sensitive. They include expressive sentences, "Ouch!"; performative sentences, such as "I baptise you"; and commandative sentences, such as "Get the milk from the fridge". This aspect of meaning is called the grammatical mood. Idealized meaning has value when attempting to understand how words are normally used, while in non-objectified or practical meaning especially in particular situations and where irony, satire, humor.
Among words and phrases, different parts of speech can be distinguished, such as noun phrases and adjectival phrases. Each of these have different kinds of meaning; nouns typically refer to entities, while adjectives typically refer to properties. Proper names, which are names that stand for individuals, like "Jerry", "Barry", "Paris," and "Venus," are going to have another kind of meaning.
When dealing with verb phrases, one approach to discovering the way the phrase means is by looking at the thematic roles the child noun phrases take on. Verbs do not point to things, but rather to the relationship between one or more nouns and some configuration or reconfiguration therein, so the meaning of a verb phrase can be derived from the meaning of its child noun phrases and the relationship between them and the verb.
Ferdinand de Saussure described language in terms of signs, which he in turn divided into signifieds and signifiers. The signifier is the sound of the linguistic object (like Socrates, Saussure didn't much concern himself with the written word). The signified, on the other hand, is the mental construction or image associated with the sound. The sign, then, is essentially the relationship between the two.
Signs themselves exist only in opposition to other signs, which means that "bat" has meaning only because it is not "cat" or "ball" or "boy". This is because signs are essentially arbitrary, as any foreign language student is well aware: there is no reason that bat couldn't mean "that bust of Napoleon over there" or "this body of water". Since the choice of signifiers is ultimately arbitrary, the meaning cannot somehow be in the signifier. Saussure instead defers meaning to the sign itself: meaning is ultimately the same thing as the sign, and meaning means that relationship between signified and signifier. This, in turn, means that all meaning is both within us and communal. Signs mean by reference to our internal lexicon and grammar, and despite their being a matter of convention, that is, a public thing, signs can only mean something to the individual - what red means to one person may not be what red means to another. However, while meanings may vary to some extent from individual to individual, only those meanings which stay within a boundary are seen by other speakers of the language to refer to reality: if one were to refer to smells as red, most other speakers would assume the person is talking nonsense (although statements like this are common among people who experience synesthesia).
Pragmatics studies the ways that context affects meaning. The two primary forms of context important to pragmatics are linguistic context and situational context. The term "pragmatics" was introduced by the Logical Positivist, Rudolf Carnap. This was an attempt to reduce subjective meaning to a secondary status and to treat what remained as objective by following Wittgenstein, who sought to objectify meaning as intent as if it were merely a matter of context. But it was Wittgenstein's own student, G.E.M. Anscombe, however, who re-emphasized the primacy of human intent and assumptions whether they were subjective or not, and who also suggested a preference for understanding causes more as influence than as relations or laws. This of course may seem obvious in hindsight when we consider understanding irony, satire, humor, poetry, representation, or foundation theory where intent, assumptions, and various value connotations as influence on our thinking need to be understood by an audience. In short, while we all use objectified meaning and consider context important, when communication breaks down, then the primacy of subjective meaning becomes overwhelming, especially when we finally ask: "What do YOU mean?"
Nevertheless, in so far as we attempt to understand meaning without directly considering subjective factors, the importance of linguistic context as an indirect way of doing that becomes exceptionally important especially when looking at particular linguistic problems such as that of pronouns. In most situations, for example, the pronoun him in the sentence "Joe also saw him" has a radically different meaning if preceded by "Jerry said he saw a guy riding an elephant" than it does if preceded by "Jerry saw the bank robber" or "Jerry saw your dog run that way". Indeed, studying context is about the only path in realistic speech or writing for understanding semantics and pragmatics without referring to meaning as intent and assumptions.
Linguistic context would to the extent possible refer to every non-linguistic factor that affects the meaning of a phrase. Nearly anything can be included in the list, from the time of day to the people involved to the location of the speaker or the temperature of the room. An example of situational context at work is evident in the phrase "it's cold in here", which can either be a simple statement of fact or a request to turn up the heat, depending on, among other things, whether or not it is believed to be in the listener's power to affect the temperature.
When we speak we perform speech acts. A speech act has an illocutionary point or illocutionary force. For example, the point of an assertion is to represent the world as being a certain way. The point of a promise is to put oneself under an obligation to do something. The illucutionary point of a speech act must be distinguished from its perlocutionary effect, which is what it brings about. A request, for example, has as its illocutionary point to direct someone to do something. Its perlocutionary effect may be the doing of the thing by the person directed. Sentences in different grammatical moods, the declarative, imperative, and interrogative, tend to perform speech acts of specific sorts. But in particular contexts one may perform a different speech act using them than that for which they are typically put to use. Thus, as noted above, one may use a sentence such as "it's cold in here" not only to make an assertion but also to request that one's auditor turn up the heat. Speech acts include performative utterances, in which one performs the speech act by using a first person present tense sentence which says that one is performing the speech act. Examples are: 'I promise to be there', 'I warn you not to do it', 'I advise you to turn yourself in', etc. Some specialized devices for performing speech acts are exclamatives and phatics, such as 'Ouch!' and 'Hello!', respectively. The former is used to perform an expressive speech act, and the latter for greeting someone.
Pragmatics, then, reveals that meaning is both something affected by and affecting the world. Meaning is something contextual with respect to language and the world, and is also something active toward other meanings and the world.
In applied pragmatics (such as neuro-linguistic programming), meaning is constituted by an individual through the active significance generated by the mental processing of stimuli input from the sensory organs. Thus, people can see, hear, feel/touch, taste and smell, and form meanings out of those sensory experiences, actively and interactively.
Even though a sensory input created by a stimulus cannot be articulated in language or signs of any kind, it can nevertheless have a meaning. This can be experimentally demonstrated by showing that people behaviourally respond in specific, non-arbitrary ways to sensing a stimulus, consciously or sub-consciously, even although they have no way of telling what it is or means, and no possible way of knowing what it is or what it means.
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