VIVY LUVIANA
P0600214050
SEMANTIC COURSE “TAKEN-HOME FINAL EXAM PAPER”
(SAUSSURE'S SEMANTIC CONCEPT, HILMAN'S THIRD LEVEL OF MEANING, AND GRICE'S THEORY OF MEANING)
Saussure’s emphasis on the langue level analysis of a language
develops semantic concepts that portray the world in a certain way. Compare
this with Harman’s three levels of meaning.
Answer:
Based
on Saussure semantic concepts, the world is portrayed as homogenous – same for
each individual within a particular community – since every single member of
the concerned community shares the same signs united by psychological bound
from the same sound-images and the same concepts. So, when one utters “table”,
the interlocutor or the hearer – belonging to the same community as the speaker
– will interpret the sign of “table” with the same sound image and the same
concepts as the speaker does. It is possible to happen, according to Saussure,
this sameness of the world portrayal of each individual, since they share only
signs which socially counted. It means that those transferred signs are collectively
approved under such a contract by the members of the community – it is an
arbitrary convention. This bears consequence that anything individual or accessory
as well as accidental of the signs is excluded from this social distribution.
These
semantic concepts of Saussure serve as the par excellence if linguistics must
be treated as a science, for the nature of science deals only with
generalization and those of Saussure’s indeed do so. It only concerns with
something general, not with particular instances from individuals. Besides,
since it triggers the identical world portrayal, the preservation of a culture will
be ideally maintained within and from generations. Nevertheless, these semantic
concepts are very hard, if not impossible, to account for the meaning in the
real life, for, among other factors, personal experience influences the
formation of the given sign. As a consequence, when one utters “table”, there is no way to secure that this
sign is also identical as the sign decoded in the mind of the interlocutor or
the hearer. Another factor is to do with the intention of the utter or speaker.
In fact, a speaker may say an utterance, but intends another. By this situation,
communication may be at risk since the meaning is not correctly conveyed. The
other one is that those concepts developed by Saussure could not account for
the ambiguity. One word may be homonymous that it leads to an ambiguity and
ambiguity can only be solved in the help of integrating context and other
nonlinguistic factors.
These
semantic concepts of Saussure are compatible to the same extent to the first
level of meaning of Harman. Both concern with meaning as a psychological entity
residing in the brain of a person. However, there lies a basic difference
between the two. In case with Saussure’s, meaning is defined a sign derived
from sound-images and concepts, while in Harman’s first level, it is said to be
concepts derived from the observational evidence and necessary inferences. It
means that based on Harman’s, to attain meaning, one must prove the existence
of the utterance or the expression by which the meaning is contained. Then, he
or she decides whether to believe or disbelieve it. Once believed or
disbelieved, the meaning is to put into a concept scheme in relation to other
experiences.
The
good point of this theory is that it can appropriately provide an argument that
one cannot believe or put meanings on things which are not existent. However not
all utterances or expressions can be provided with a proper evidence or
inference, such as utterance in form of questions or imperatives. Evidences are
not properly looked for those types of utterances which have been counted as the
weakness of this theory.
2.
Compare Saussurean semantic system and
Grice’s theory of meaning.
Answer:
Saussurean
semantic system deals with meaning as a sign of a combination of the signifier
(sound-image) and the signified (concepts), two of which are purely psychological
in nature, while meaning based on Grice’s deals with naturalness and non-naturalness.
In the level of natural meaning, Grice’s theory and of Saussure possesses a kind
of similarity in which both centers on the sentence meaning: the meaning derived
based on the lexical meanings of its parts as coded in the lexicon and excluded
from the other nonlinguistic factors. However, there exists another level of
meaning from Grice’s – non-natural meaning (meaningNN) – which
counts as the difference between Saussure’s and Grice’s, for in this level,
meaning is not counted based on the lexical meaning, but more on a certain
message an utter or a speaker implies in communication with others (conversational
implicature). This meaning is accomplished by saying such an utterance which is
believed by the speaker to be able to induce certain belief in the mind of the
interlocutor or hearers, and also the belief that the interlocutor or the
hearer will recognize the speaker’s intention behind the utterance. So, an
utterance “I parked my car in the sixth floor,” in the response of another
utterance by the interlocutor “How did you get to this hotel?’ may be used by
the speaker to induce the belief in the interlocutor that the speaker has just
afforded to buy a car which he/she could not some time ago. However, the
Grice’s theory of meaning, according to my understanding, produces a weakness,
that is, not all utterances one says needs the presence of audience and their
recognition of one’s intention. In fact, in many cases, we produce utterances
to ourselves without requiring the presence of anybody else. Still, those
utterances are meaningful.
3.
In terms of language as a system that
involves selection, describe two ways meaning can be extracted from that system
according to Saussure.
Answer:
In
regard with selection process, meanings can be derived in two different, but
related ways; that is, syntagmatic and paradigmatic ways. In syntagmatic way,
the meaning of a linguistic unit is derived from the meanings of other
linguistic units which may either precede or follow it that is the linearity of
some linguistic units. For an instance, in a phrase, “my excellent lecturer”,
the noun linguistic unit “lecturer” serves as the head element of the phrase,
the adjective linguistic unit “excellent” serves as the modifier of the noun
linguistic unit, and the determiner linguistic unit “the” serves as the
delimiting article.
On the contrary,
in paradigmatic way, the meaning of a linguistic unit is derived from the
meanings of other units which have something in a common or associative
relation, whether in forms or meanings. For instance, in terms of the
commonality of the form, the linguistic unit “student” has its meaning as “the
one who get taught from a teacher” in association with the meaning a linguistic
unit “teacher” which has the meaning as “one who teaches a student”. While in terms
of forms (pronunciation), the linguistic unit “teach” has its meaning as an present
action of giving one instruction in association with the linguistic unit “teaching”
which has its meaning as the a progressive action of giving one instructions.
