phat/fat, phuque&suque

[Lynne Murphy]

>If Lynne or another local savant will be so kind as to present a brief
>authoritative definition of 'connotation' as opposed to 'expressive
>meaning' (preferably with examples), I'll try to work with it. It seems to
>me that denotation is not always clearly distinct from connotation, nor
>connotation from 'social meaning'/'affective meaning'.
>
>-- Doug Wilson


Geoffrey Leech's _Semantics_ text probably does the most to
distinguish among these.

Denotation = what the word can refer to

Expressive meaning = any aspect of meaning that's not denotation

Connotation = associations that go along with the word that say more
about the referent, but don't necessarily limit its denotation. E.g.,
If I say 'doggie' it might connote that what I'm referring to is cute
and fluffy, whereas if I say 'dog', it doesn't.  For me, connotation
can have several sources, some of which Leech or others separate out
as different kinds of meaning.  One source is the contexts in which
they occur--if you've only heard the word 'castigate' used in a
Catholic school, then you might associate it with teachers and
pupils, or authority vested by a higher power or something, and that
will color how you use (and understand the use of) the word.  Another
source for connotations might be other senses that a word has that
bleeds into the sense that's being used.  For example, if you want to
advertise a beach resort for young people, you might want to remark
upon the 'hot sands' in order to get a sexy connotation or something.
(I'm making up these examples off the top of my head--doesn't mean
they're good!) Another, as we've seen is the desire to differentiate
between synonymous words (and how we do that differentiation might be
related to the context or other senses...).  Now, a big question is
whether connotation and denotation can be really separated--does
/va:z/ differ from /ve:s/ in that it connotes expensiveness, or does
it denote a subtype of vase?

Social meaning = information about the speaker or the social
situation that is given by the expression--which can be done in a
bunch of ways:
dialect = gives info about speaker's regional or ethnic background
register = gives info about speaker's perceptions of the formality or
other qualities of the social system
affect = gives info about the speaker's attitude--again, with the
'doggie' example, use of the term may convey the affective meaning
that I'm a lover of dogs, or something.
jargon/slang = identifies person as part of an in-group or generation, etc.

That's how I use the terms, at least.  I'm sure some will use them
differently.  But I think it's worth differentiating connotation and
social meaning because they indicate meaning about different things
(the referent or the participants in the exchange).

Lynne





--
M. Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 3AN    UK
phone:  +44(0)1273-678844
fax:    +44(0)1273-671320