Meaning seems at once the most obvious feature of language and the most
obscure aspect to study. It is obvious because it is what we use
language for—to communicate with each other, to convey 'what we mean'
effectively. But the steps in understanding something said to us in a
language in which we are fluent are so rapid, so transparent, that we
have little conscious feel for the principles and knowledge which
underlie this communicative ability.
In linguistics, meaning is the information or concepts that a sender intends to convey, or does convey, in communication with a receiver.
Semantic meaning
The
relationship between words and their referents is called semantic.
Semantics is the study of how meaning is conveyed through signs and
language. Understanding how facial expressions, body language, and tone
affect meaning, and how words, phrases, sentences, and punctuation
relate to meaning are examples. Various subgroups of semantics are
studied within the fields of linguistics, logic and computing. For
example, linguistic semantics includes the history of how words have
been used in the past; logical semantics includes how people mean and
refer in terms of likely intent and assumptions.
In semantics and pragmatics, meaning is the message conveyed by words, sentences, and symbols in a context. Also called lexical meaning or semantic meaning.
