We explain what the meaning is, what types exist and what are the characteristics of the different disciplines that study it.
What is the meaning?
Meaning is understood as the meaning of the words and / or the phrases of the idiom, that is, the specific referent or the set of referents to which a term alludes. It is a sense shared to some extent by transmitter Y receiver, without which they would not be able to understand each other, but which exists in the midst of a range of nuances, implicatures and interpretations that depend on various contexts.
So, strictly speaking, there is not really a meaning, but a set of possible meanings. Thus, we can identify two types of meanings:
- Denotative meaning: It is the objective meaning of a term, one that tends to be universal among speakers of the same language. It is the one that appears in all dictionaries.
- Connotative meaning: They are the senses subjective of the same term, which vary according to the group, the individual or the culture, is known as.
Both exist at the same time in the language: the word "night" denotes the period of absence of the sun in the sky, but at the same time it connotes in the western imagination the end of things, the absence itself, the secret, the hidden and to some extent, the danger.
There are many ways of thinking and understanding what meaning is. The posture of the linguistics traditional understands it as a concept or an abstraction that we form from real things, and that we mentally attribute to a signifier: a mental “trace” of the word with which to express that meaning.
Thus, the significant and signified pair would be found within the functioning of language, and this is what allows us its complex relations of meaning: that which we call synonymy, for example, it is nothing more than the same meaning shared by two different signifiers.
However, there has been much debate about the nature of meaning. There are those who prefer to think of it as an interpretation that we make of linguistic signs, while others attribute it to the use we make of them, that is, some positions assume that words "have" a meaning, and others that words We "give" them meaning when we use them.
The science that studies meaning is known as semantics, and it applies to both linguistics, logic and other cognitive sciences.
Linguistic semantics
Linguistic semantics is the discipline that studies meaning within the framework of language itself, that is, what is related to the Linguistic sign. It seeks to understand the functioning of lexical structures and their relationship with referents, as well as the complex mental mechanisms that allow multiple meanings (or nuances) to be attributed to words. He is also interested in the change of meaning throughout the history (historical semantics).
However, linguistic semantics is not capable of covering all matters of meaning, but only those that are proper to the linguistic sign. The rest of the nuances are the responsibility of the syntax (the order of the prayer) and pragmatics (the context in which verbal language is used).
Formal semantics
Once semantics emerged in the framework of linguistic study, it was replicated in other areas of study, such as the case of formal languages (that is, non-verbal). The latter are those human languages whose expressions do not have a referential meaning, but rather acquire their meaning within the framework of their own expressions.
An example are the math: "Two" does not refer to a concrete referent of reality, but to a type of relationship and formal abstraction that we make of it. The same thing happens with multiplication: it does not have a concrete referent, but is an idea that operates in the world of mathematical abstractions.
Thus, formal semantics is the study of interpretation in formal languages, in which logical consequence relationships are fundamental, since the meaning of the symbols of a formal language is arbitrary, that is, it is voluntarily assigned during its use. , and does not usually refer to perceptible reality, but to abstract relationships between ideas.
Semiotics or semiology
With these two terms it is known, interchangeably, the discipline that studies the systems of communication within the societies human beings, that is, the process of semiosis (or significance).
It consists fundamentally in studying the signs in civilization, understood as the germ of both language and thought. Thus, this discipline transcends the mere study of meaning, creating communicative links between linguistics, neuroscience, anthropology, etc.
In a practical sense, there is no difference between using the term "semiotics" or "semiology", simply some academies prefer one and others another.
However, there are divergences of theoretical approach between one and the other: semiotics tends to be more related to functionalism, at least in American academia; while semiology tends more towards the structuralism, at least in the European and Latin American academies.
More in: Semiotics, Semiology.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is, along with semantics, the discipline that deals with meaning in verbal language. In that sense, both are branches of linguistics, but unlike semantics, pragmatics pays special attention to the elements non-verbal, non-linguistic, involved in communication.
In other words, pragmatics is the science of context in verbal communication. Thus, in the pragmatic analysis, factors such as gestures, proxemics, individual linguistic capacities, etc. are taken into consideration.