The denotation of a word is the actual definition of the word rather than the nuances of its meaning or the feelings it implies.
Examples of Denotation
Every word has a denotation. Here are more examples of the differences between the denotations and connotations of common words to illustrate what denotation means:
- Pants versus trousers: In American English, pants and trousers have the same denotation. They both refer to the clothing that one wears on one’s legs. However, “trousers” sound like a much more formal item of clothing than “pants” (note that in British English “pants” actually refers to underwear and therefore has a different denotation than trousers).
- Boss versus leader: While “boss” is not necessarily negative it still separates this person more definitively from his or her underlings than the word “leader.” “Leader” generally sounds more inspiring. Compare also the difference between “bossy” and “demanding.” Neither sounds particularly appealing, but “bossy” connotes more of an attitude that someone tells others what to do without reason, whereas a “demanding” person asks much of others but for a good reason.
- Burden versus obligation: Both “burden” and “obligation” refer to something that a person must do. However, a burden is more onerous. A burden makes life difficult for the person who shoulders it, while an obligation may be simply what a person is required to do without resenting it.
The connotation of a word refers to the emotional or cultural association with that word rather than its dictionary definition. The connotation definition is therefore not the explicit meaning of the word, but rather the meaning that the word implies.
Examples of Connotation in Common Speech
There are many words that can be understood as synonyms with the same definition, yet their connotations are notable different. For example:
- “House” versus “Home”: Both words refer to the structure in which a person lives, yet “home” connotes more warmth and comfort, whereas “house” sounds colder and more distant.
- “Cheap” versus “Affordable”: While both words mean that something does not cost a lot, “cheap” can also connote something that it not well-made or of low value, while “affordable” can refer to a quality item or service that happens to be well-priced.
- “Riots” versus “Protests”: The difference between these two words is that “riots” connotes a violent gathering of people who are not necessarily in the right, while “protests” can have a more peaceful connotation and is often used when there is sympathy with the protesters.
“Implicature” denotes either (i) the act of meaning or implying one thing by saying something else, or (ii) the object of that act. Implicatures can be part of sentence meaning or dependent on conversational context, and can be conventional (in different senses) or unconventional. Figures of speech such as metaphor, irony, and understatement provide familiar examples. Implicature serves a variety of goals beyond communication: maintaining good social relations, misleading without lying, style, and verbal efficiency. Knowledge of common forms of implicature is acquired along with one's native language at an early age. Conversational implicatures have become one of the principal subjects of pragmatics. An important conceptual and methodological issue in semantics is how to distinguish senses and entailments from conventional conversational implicatures. A related issue is the degree to which sentence meaning determines what is said. Implicature has been invoked for a variety of purposes, from defending controversial semantic claims in philosophy to explaining lexical gaps in linguistics. H. P. Grice, who coined the term “implicature,” and classified the phenomenon, developed an influential theory to explain and predict conversational implicatures, and describe how they arise and are understood. The Cooperative Principle and associated maxims play a central role. Neo-Gricean theories have modified Grice's principles to some extent, and Relevance theories replace them with a principle of communicative efficiency. The problems for such principle-based theories include overgeneration, lack of determinacy, clashes, and the fact that speakers often have other goals. An alternative approach emphasizes that implicatures can be explained and predicted in all the ways intentions and conventions can be.
For example, the sentence "Mary had a baby and got married" strongly suggests that Mary had the baby before the wedding, but the sentence would still be strictly true if Mary had her baby after she got married. Further, if we add the qualification "— not necessarily in that order" to the original sentence, then the implicature is cancelled even though the meaning of the original sentence is not altered.
Types of implicature
Conversational implicature
Paul Grice identified three types of general conversational implicatures:1. The speaker deliberately flouts a conversational maxim to convey an additional meaning not expressed literally. For instance, a speaker responds to the question "How did you like the guest lecturer?" with the following utterance:
- Well, I’m sure he was speaking English.
2. The speaker’s desire to fulfill two conflicting maxims results in his or her flouting one maxim to invoke the other. For instance, a speaker responds to the question "Where is John?" with the following utterance:
- He’s either in the cafeteria or in his office.
3. The speaker invokes a maxim as a basis for interpreting the utterance. In the following exchange:
- Do you know where I can get some gas?
- There’s a gas station around the corner.
Scalar implicature
According to Grice (1975), another form of conversational implicature is also known as a scalar implicature. This concerns the conventional uses of words like "all" or "some" in conversation.- I ate some of the pie.
Conventional implicature
Conventional implicature is independent of the cooperative principle and its four maxims. A statement always carries its conventional implicature.- Donovan is poor but happy.
References :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature
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