Meaning of Linguistic Units
The word denotes a particular thing as well as a concept of a thing; thus the word has a denotative meaning.
Denotation is the literal or “dictionary” meaning of a word.
Connotation embraces all the emotions and associations that a word or phrase may arouse. So connotation may be negative or positive. Connotation may express the speaker’s attitude to the thing mentioned about – this is the emotive component of meaning. Connotation may also indicate the social sphere in which the communication takes place – this is a stylistic reference
An emotive component of meaning may find its linguistic expression in the form of suffixes (e.g. –y/-ie, -let, etc.). Or the component may have no specific linguistic form and be contained in the concept the given word denotes (e.g. nasty, lovely, terrible, etc.). There are some words of purely emotive meaning – interjections (e.g. oh, alas, etc.).
Stylistic reference. Verbal communication takes place in different spheres of human activity: everyday life, art, business etc. Each sphere has a peculiar mode of linguistic expression (a functional style). Words that are mostly used in one functional style are said to have a stylistic reference. The words are classified as either neutral or stylistically marked. Stylistically marked words are in turn divided into numerous groups. The main division is literary stylistic layer / non-literary stylistic layer.
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