Meaning

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Meaning Reality

• Jeffries 1998 Chpt 7.

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Outline

• Whorfian Hypothesis
• Semantic Engineering constructing
  meaning/reality
• Negotiating meaning
• Cross-cultural Meaning

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Whorfian Hypothesis

• Our perception of the world (reality) is
  structured by the language we speak

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How does it work?

• Language system
• reality represented by the system is
  constructed in the way the system is structured
  (ie. lexicon, syntax)
• Human learn to perceive / talk about the world
  through their L1 thus their understanding of the
  world around them will necessarily be constructed
  by that language (230) worldview

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To Exemplify

• Morning afternoon midday evening night
  midnight day
• Subuh zuhur asar maghrib ishak
• Sometime we feel that our way of perceiving the
  sections of a day are the natural one all
  others being strange the language has
  conditioned us to see / understand the world in
  a particular way.

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Other examples

• Specialised terminology major minor baroque
  repertoire waltz jazz etc.
• Feminism English is a sexist language Mr. Mrs.
  Miss. / chairman / man

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Constructing Meaning / Reality Semantic
Engineering

• Relabelling
• Handicap disabled ? physically challenged
• MetaphorizationUsing metaphorical structures
  to create meaning The Metaphors we Live by
  (Lakoff Johnson 1980)
• Time is Money
• Spend a week at home
• Wasted an hour of my time
• Save a few minutes for me

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Meaning, Reality and Metaphor
metaphor is not merely a colourful form of
expression, a daring form of linguistic
swordplay, but a cognitively central conceptual
tool that is used to structure our view of the
world and our experiences within it which is to
say, metaphor constitutes an important element of
our learning faculty.(Veale ,1995 Metaphor,
Memory and Meaning Symbolic and Connectionist
Issues in Metaphor Interpretation)  
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Negotiating Meaning

• Where does meaning reside?
• Usage-based or system-based? / Langue vs parole /
  competence vs performance / writer vs. text.
• Dialogic model of meaning (Bakhtin) meaning
  involves negotiation between speaker/writer and
  hearer/reader who uses the common resources of a
  language

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Cross-cultural Meaning

• matching the names (verbal labels) of things in
  two languages e.g. rock batu, house rumah
  etc. getting words for things method
• Finding things that goes with words I.e. the
  words are conceptual containers that reflect the
  world (or the organisation of) and the saliency
  of things , concepts for the speakers of that
  language
• Default meaning might not be the same ie.
  People do not see the things in quite the same
  way

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End note

• Why language? bahasa jiwa bangsa encoded in
  the device / tool most flexible, productive and
  vital for communciation in that society.

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