1 - Introduction: some basic terms and concepts

Summary

The meaning of ‘meaning’

In this chapter I will make a number of general points and introduce certain distinctions which will be taken for granted in all that follows. The reader's attention is drawn especially to the fact that any term that is introduced here and given a technical interpretation will be used exclusively in that sense, in so far as it is employed as a technical term, throughout the book. Such terms will be marked with a following asterisk when they are introduced in their technical sense in this or succeeding chapters too. Asterisks will also be used occasionally to remind the reader that a term which has been introduced earlier is being employed in a technical sense and should not be interpreted in any of its nontechnical senses. All asterisked terms are explained in the body of the text or in the footnotes.

Semantics is generally defined as the study of meaning; and this is the definition that we will provisionally adopt: what is to be understood by ‘meaning’ in this context is one of our principal concerns in later chapters. Ever since Ogden and Richards (1923) published their classic treatise on this topic, and indeed since long before that, it has been customary for semanticists to emphasize the fact (and let us grant that it is a fact) that the noun ‘meaning’ and the verb ‘to mean’ themselves have many distinguishable meanings.