Page 402 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes language to the rest of the world, and such meaningfulness is an essential part of any definition of
language. So this approach is inadequate as a complete treatment of meaning.
Meaning of words in dictionary entries is derived on the basis of their relation to the whole of
human experience, on the basis of extra-linguistic criterion and unsystematized commonsense.
For this reason some linguists have tried to redefine or reconsider meaning in so far as it is
relevant to linguists as equivalent to distribution.’ That is to say, the meaning of a word, as far as
it concerns the linguist within the strict confines of his subject, is to be understood as the range of
its occurrences in sentences consisting of other words. Just as there are probably no words exactly
alike in meaning in all contests, so there will probably be no two words in any language sharing
exactly the same lexical environment (distribution)’

Operational (Contextual or Functional) Approach
In the 1950s, a new and entirely different conception of meaning began to take the shape inside
and outside linguistics. It received its most pointed and most provocative formulation in L.
Wittgensten’s Philosophical Investigations, which was published posthumously in 1953. This theory
was also advocated by Malinowski and J. R. Firth. It emphasized purely operational character of
scientific concepts like ‘length’, ‘time’, or ‘energy’. The contextual theoreticians said that meaning
or concept was a set of operations : ‘the true meaning of a word is to be found by observing what
a man does with it, not what he says about it.’ So the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
From this emerged substitution method. And Firth defined the word as a ‘lexical substitution-
counter’. So the words were to be studied according to their functions, in the contexts they occurred.
As a matter of fact, the operational theory is concerned with meaning in speech, the referential
theory with meaning in language. The functional approach treats words as tools. It incorporates
the speaker and hearer, the actions they are performing at the time and various external objects
and events. It studies meaning in space and time along with not only the relevant objects and
actions taking place at the time, but also the knowledge shared by the speaker and hearer of what
has been said earlier. It must also be taken to include the tacit acceptance by the speaker and
hearer of all the relevant conventions, beliefs and presuppositions ‘taken for granted’ by the
members of the speech-community to which the speaker and hearer belong.
In terms of contexts of situation the meaning of utterance includes both ‘reference’ (denotation) of
individual’s words and the meaning of the whole sentences. So it deals with the total utterance as
a whole. Differences of personal status, family and social relations, degrees of intimacy, relative
age, and other such factors, irrelevant to the considerations of sentences as the expression of
logical propositions, are all dealt with under this approach of the context of situations. As Robins
explains :
“Meaning in languages is therefore not a single relation or a single sort of relation, but involves set
of multiple and various relations holding between the utterance and its parts and the relevant
features and components of the environment, both cultural and physical, and forming part of the
more extensive system of interpersonal relations involved in the existence of human societies.”
Hence sentences are brought into multiple relationships with the irrelevant components of the
environment. Language is studied functionally. To mention only a few uses of language, one can
distinguish poetry of all kinds, rhetoric, narrative and historical records, ritual and ceremonial
utterances, the forms of legal, political, commerical, and administrative operations, the professional
intercourse of technical, learned, and academic persons. J. R. Firth has suggested a typical outline
context to bring the utterance and its parts into relationship with the following categories :
1. The relevant features of participants (persons, personalities)
(a) The verbal action of the participants.
(b) The non-verbal action of the participants.
2. The relevant objects.
3. The effect of the verbal action.

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