The word and its meaning (denotative and connotative meanings of the word; components of the connotative meanings of the word).
- V.V. Vinogradov considers the word in the language as a system or unity of the form and meanings. I.R. Galperin defines the word as a unit of language functioning within a sentence or within a part of it which by its sound or graphical form expresses a concrete or abstract notion or a grammatical notion through one of its meanings and which is capable of enriching its semantic structure by acquiring new meanings and losing old ones. The material aspect of a word is its sound form, its ideal aspect – the notion contained. It should be mentioned that the word and the notion form a unity, not identity. Various examples prove that one notion may be expressed by different words, as in to phone, to call, to ring up, and vice versa: one word may contain different notions, as we may see in head, head of a a state, head of a river, head of a nail.
The word qualifies and evaluates objects of the surrounding reality. The most essential feature of the word is that it expresses the concept of a thing, process, phenomenon, naming/denoting them. Concept is a logical category, its linguistic counterpart is meaning. Meaning, as the outstanding scholar L.Vygotsky put it, is the unity of generalization, communication and thinking. The general tendency is to regard meaning as something stable at a given period of time. Every notional word expresses some definite information which is divided into denotative (the main) and connotative (additional). The first is viewed as objective and the second – as subjective aspects of the meaning of the word. The majority of the English words contain only denotative information owing to which they are neutral from the viewpoint of Stylistics. Stylistics deals with the meanings of the word realized in the text, their stylistic function for the perception of the idea of the work.
Every neutral word in a certain context can acquire some connotative meaning. Stylistics mostly deals with the connotative meaning of the word which is constituted by the following components: emotive, evaluative, expressive, stylistic, pragmatic, associative, ideological/conceptual. All these components may overlap; some of them become more important for the act of communication than the others.
- An emotive component of the meaning reveals the emotional layer of cognition and perception. It may be traditional or occasional. A word or its lexico-semantic variant possesses an emotive component when it expresses some emotion or feeling. An emotive component appears on the basis of the logical meaning and ousts it (e.g. honey and duck expressing affection);- An evaluative component states the value of the indicated notion, expressing positive or negative judgement. It may be included into the dictionary definition of the word (e.g. In the Hornby dictionary: to sneak - to move silently and secretly, usually for a bad purpose); - An expressive component of the word underlines, intensifies something in the word itself or in the words connected with it syntactically by means of its figurativeness or in some other way (e.g. She was a thin, frail, little thing. Thing intensifies the meaning of the epithets thin frail, little). Expressiveness may be figurative (the above mentioned example) and quantitative recognized by such intensifiers as all, ever, even, really, absolutely; - A stylistic component (stylistic connotation) is typical of definite functional styles or the situations of communication with which it is associated even being used in uncommon context. It indicates “the register”: science, official document, poetry, etc. (e.g. foe, thee are characteristic of poetry, terms – of scientific style, etc. - A pragmatic component reveals the meaning directed at the perlocutionary effect of the utterance (e.g. hungry doesn’t require the whole sentence as a background context in order to decipher its meaning (a person is hungry); - An associative component is connected through individual psychological or linguistic associations with related and non-related notions (e.g. eagle used in reference to a brave person); - An ideological component reveals political, social, ideological preferences of the speaker (e.g. a spy – an intelligent officer).
|
|
|
Дата добавления: 2019-02-13; просмотров: 632; Мы поможем в написании вашей работы! |
Мы поможем в написании ваших работ!