DISCOURSE ANALYSIS 2 ? CLASS HANDOUT

LINGUA INGLESE 2 LLEM
MODULO 2 - 2008-9 MEANING AND DISCOURSE IN ENGLISH
Prof. Hugo Bowles Lessons 1-17
SUMMARIES
LESSON 1
INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW OF MEANING AND DISCOURSE SUMMARY The scope of semantics - the meaning of meaning Discourse analysis is concerned with meaning in use, in other words by the
meaning which is produced by speakers/writers and understood by
listeners/readers in everyday life. The exchange between Darcy and Lizzie
in the Pride and Prejudice film is an example of how there is often a big
difference between what people say and what people mean. We will be looking
at this kind of discourse meaning from lecture 6 onwards.
Semantics on the other hand is concerned with the conventional meaning of
words and sentences. The word mean is used in English to convey intention
(I didn't mean to hurt you), to indicate a sign (those black clouds mean
rain) and to the sense of words and sentences ("dog" means "cane").
Semantics is concerned with the last of these three and lexical semantics
is concerned with the meaning of words.
However word and sentence meaning is not the only kind of meaning with
which we are concerned in this module.
Lexical semantics - the meaning of words Words and meanings
Words are not just the names of objects of our experience. You cannot just
explain meanings with other words. This is circular. That is why you cannot
learn a language by looking in a dictionary and that is why dictionaries
are all organised differently.
It is difficult to claim that the word is the basic unit of semantics
because it is difficult to establish what counts as a word and also because
there is no one-to-one relationship between words and meanings:
. sometimes words are not single units of meaning; we can have many
words together standing for a single concept (e.g. idioms like to be
caught red-handed) and a single word standing for a number of concepts
(e.g. bank)
. sometimes it is very difficult to separate units of meaning; for
example the expression heavy smoker is not just a combination of the
word heavy and the word smoker. In this context the meaning of one
word (heavy) is dependent on the meaning of the other (smoker) and the
meaning of the noun phrase needs to be interpreted together (see
lecture 5 - Collocation). Transparent and opaque
Some words are transparent because the meaning of the whole is clear from
the sum of the parts (morphemes) of the word (e.g. blackberry). Other words
are opaque because the meaning of the whole is not clear from the sum of
the parts (e.g. strawberry).
Lexemes In semantics it is more correct to refer to lexemes than to words. Lexemes
are different forms of the same word (e.g. love and loved are lexemes). A
lexeme is a unit of lexical meaning which exists regardless of any
inflectional endings it may have or the number of words it may contain.
Thus love, caught red-handed and come in are all lexemes. The lexeme is a
better candidate than the word as the basic unit of semantics. Reading material Palmer, pp.17-43 LESSON 2
Lexical relations
SUMMARY Focus . How word meanings are related to each other
Horizontal relationships are syntagmatic and vertical relationships are
paradigmatic (Sausurre)
Semantic relationships are paradigmatic (vertical) Hyponymy describes a relationship when we can say "X is a kind of Y". In
this model one lexeme (gorgonzola) can substitute another (mozzarella): cheese SUPERORDINATE
TERM gorgonzola stilton cheddar mozzarella
HYPONYMS Hyponymy is particularly important to linguists because it is the core
element in producing dictionary definitions. The nest way to define a
lexeme (e.g. gorgonzola) is to provide a superordinate term (cheese) and
some distinguishing features.
It is usually possible to trace a path through a dictionary following the
superordinate terms as they become increasingly abstract. Synonyms are lexemes which have the same meaning. English has a
particularly large number of synonyms for historical reasons, because its
vocabulary has come from different sources (Germanic, Latin, Greek, French
influences)
Are synonyms possible? It is almost always possible to distinguish meanings
between similar words:
. some words only occur in particular contexts (e.g. dialect words,
English/American words like autumn/fall)
. some words only occur in certain styles, e.g. salt (standard usage)
and sodium chloride (scientific)
. some words only occur in certain collocations, e.g. profound sympathy
but not profound water.
. some words are emotionally stronger, e.g. freedom not liberty
. some words overlap in meaning but are not identical (e.g. govern and
direct)
For these reasons some linguists argue that true synonyms (words with
exactly the same meaning) are not possible because you can always
distinguish between them Antonyms are lexemes which are opposite in meaning. An antonym is the
answer to a question "what is the opposite of the word x?". Unlike synonyms
(remember there is some doubt about whether true synonyms really exist)
antonymy definitely exists in several forms:
gradable antonyms like happy/sad, large/small, wet/dry; these are capable
of comparison (e.g. you can say wetter/dryer, larger/smaller; there is a
scale with wet at one end and dry at the other
complementary antonyms such as single/married or alive/dead; there is no
scale of aliveness or firstness; if one applies, the other does not - to be
dead is not to be alive
converse antonyms like over/under, buy/sell, over/under; these are mutually
dependent (you cannot have a husband without a wife)
Opposites do not have to be antonyms. For example we have awkward and
clumsy on one hand but skilful and dexterous on the other. They are
opposites but not antonyms.
We know antonyms intuitively. The antonym of little is big and the antonym
of large is small. Large is not the antonym of little even though they are
conceptually opposed. Polysemy refers to the different meanings of a single word. Homonymy refers
to different words with the same form. The word bank can be found with a
number of different meanings, e.g. river bank and Lloyd's bank. Is bank
polysemous (i.e. bank is one word with two meanings) or is bank a homonym,
(i.e. bank in river bank is a separate word with a separate meaning from
bank in Lloyd's bank?
Where the difference in meaning is predictable or regular (e.g. the eye of
a tornado), we have polysemy; metaphors for example are often polysemous.
Where there is a core meaning (e.g. in the different meanings of charge),
we also tend to have polysemy.
Where the difference in meaning is not predictable (e.g. river bank and
Lloyd's bank), we have homonymy. Reading material Yule, pp.104-108; Palmer, pp.83-108 LESSON 3
Collocation
SUMMARY
Collocation refers to the relationship between words that frequently occur
together, like weapons of mass destruction. Words often acquire their
meanings as a consequence of their collocations. For example pretty
collocates with girl, woman, flower, garden etc. whereas handsome
collocates with boy, man, car etc.. As a result the word pretty has
acquired a feminine quality and the word handsome a masculine one.
A word may also acquire different collocational meaning depending on the
word which accompanies it. For example the word white has a different
meaning in the noun phrases white wine, white noise, white man, white
coffee (see also polysemy in lecture 3). Some criteria
. Non compositionality: collocational phrases mean more than the sum of
their parts, e.g. hot dog has a unique meaning which is not hot + dog.
Idioms such as to wear your heart on your sleeve are examples of non-
compositional collocations.
. Non substitutability: collocations tend to be fixed and you cannot
modify or substitute part of a collocation with another
noun/adjective, e.g. you cannot say yellow wine or whiter wine.
. Strong, medium and weak collocations: a unique collocation is an
expression like to foot the bill, in which the only noun which can co-
occur with the verb to foot is the bill. There is nothing else which
you can "foot" in English. Strong collocations are rare co-
occurrences. For example the adjective trenchant is usually followed
by the word criticism and rarely by other words. There are also medium
collocations such as to recover from an operation. In this case there
are several things that you can recover from but not a great many.
Weak collocations are frequent co-occurrences. The expression white
wine is a weak collocation because white can co-occur with almost any
noun. Learning collocations
There is no reason why particular words tend to go together. For example,
there is no reason why deep collocates with water (we say deep water) but
profound does not (we cannot say profound water). There is no reason why we
say broad daylight but not bright daylight. There are no rules or
explanations for this. You just have to learn the combinations.
Collocation is extremely important for developing your writing skills. A
typical collocation mistake is to write/say high house rather than tall
house so it is important to note down this kind of mistake and to learn the
correct collocations that you need.
When you read a text you should notice the collocations and you should have
a collocation notebook in which you note down a number of collocation