词汇与意义

补充材料：“词汇与意义”

Everybody knows that words represent meaning. The problem is that they may represent several types of meaning simultaneously. Geoffery Leech, a world famous British linguist, categorizes seven types of meaning which will be presented in relation to words in the following sections.

1．Conceptual meaning （概念意义）

2．Connotative meaning（内涵意义）

3．Social meaning（社会意义）

4．Affective meaning（情感意义）

5．Reflected meaning（反映意义）

6．Collocative meaning（搭配意义）

7．Thematic meaning（主题意义）

1．Conceptual meaning （概念意义）

Conceptual meaning is the basic meaning presented by meaningful linguistic units, including words and it is often, though not always, the central factor in linguistic communication. It refers to logical, cognitive, referential or denotative content. Words may refer to objects in the real world (e.g. dog, book, river, etc.) or abstract concepts (e.g. life, friendship, hatred, etc.) in our mind. The relationship between a word and an object in the real world or a concept in our mind to which the word refers is the conceptual meaning of the word.

2．Connotative meaning（内涵意义）

Connotative meaning is the communicative value that an expression has in addition to the purely conceptual meaning（内涵意义是一个词语在纯概念意义之外的交际值）.The word “woman” can be defined conceptually as an adult female. And we know that several other psychological and social features can be attributed to her, such as “gregarious”（爱交际）, “subject to instinct”（易受直觉影响）, “capable of speech”（语言能力强）, “experienced in cookery”（精于烹调）, “skirt or dress wearing”（穿裙子）and “long hair wearing”（留长发）.

These additional features are its connotative meaning, which may further include such features as “frail”（脆弱）, “prone to tears”（爱哭）, “emotional”（感情用事）, “inconstant”

（轻率易变）, etc. as some males tend to impose on her and such good qualities as “gentle”, “compassionate”（富有同情心）, “sensitive”, “hardworking” and so on.. “Statesman”（政治家）and “politician”（政客）are mainly distinguished by their connotative meaning. They can both be used to refer to a high government official. While “politician” conveys a derogative（贬义的）connotative meaning “engaging in politics for personal gain”, “statesman” does not.

3．Social meaning（社会意义）

Social meaning or stylistic meaning is what a piece of language conveys about the social circumstances of its use（社会意义又称文体意义，指一种语言所使用的社会环境）. The social circumstance of language use may include at least users (who are using language), setting (where is language used), topics (what are the language users talking or writing about). For example, “domicile”, “residence”, “adobe” and “home” are synonymous to each other, that is, conceptually they refer to the same thing in the real world. However, “domicile” is normally used in official or legal documents or between people who are involved in official or legal affairs. “Residence” is normally used in formal or administrative circumstances. “Adobe” is a