What is 'meaning'?

At close observation, it is evident that a word of a language signifies a conceptualization of a worldly or an abstract experience. The relationship between the utterance of a word and the meaning it signifies is an arbitrary equation that is constructed by a tacit and unwritten agreement among the practitioners of that language. This relationship means that a society using a language agrees to follow the rule that a particular object or an abstract experience is to be signified and encapsulated in the form of a combination of sounds called a word. The same pattern is applied to phrases, sentences, proverbs, adages, paragraphs, documentation and all other constructs of a language. In linguistics, which can be broadly identified as the study of languages, Semantics forms a specific domain of the study of meaning, at various levels and depths.

What then is ‘meaning’? We usually don’t associate any difficulty in understanding what a word like ‘book’ means. However, when we look closely enough, and ask ourselves, what does the word that sounds as ‘book’ really signify, or why is a book called a ‘book’?, it suddenly becomes more complex. This is due to the fallacy of belief that we all carry with us: that all the signification is a-priori, or each association between a word and a thing has existed forever and that there must be some strong and scientific reason for this association. Semantics shows that this is not the case. Meaning is an arbitrary relationship, as stated above. Nobody knows why a ‘book’ is only called as ‘book’ and not as ‘koob’ or ‘dinosaur’. There is no scientific reason why a ‘book’ is called a ‘book’. Semantics deals with the exploration of such deeper aspects of language studies.

Meaning can be approximated as that totality of all impressions in terms of worldly and abstract experiences that are encoded in the form of a combination of sounds that creates constructs called word, phrase, sentence and so on. This is not an extraordinarily accurate description of ‘meaning’, because as can be seen in our study of language that, a single word like ‘fan’, that we used at the starting, can mean multiple things, impressions, experiences and actions. Hence, the meaning of 'meaning' is highly fluid and transcendent.

The Complexity of Meaning

'Meaning' is a very complex area of study, because language which codifies, encapsulates and to some extent creates the construct called life, is complex. Consider the below two sentences –

1. The minister pledged "I will wipe the tears of my countrymen"
2. The mother asked the girl "Could you wipe the tears of your crying brother?"

The literal meaning of 'tears' in the above two sentences are closely related. However, since the context, mood, intent and intensity of these sentences are different, the same word 'tears' assumes totally different meanings. In the first sentence, it is just connotative with an implied meaning. In the second one, it is denotative and has a direct meaning. This little example shows that the complex nature of life and the infinitely heterogeneous ways in which human situations evolve, make a language arrive at meanings to a word that are vastly different.

The world of 'meaning' and 'meaning-making' is very vast, complex and interesting. Linguists have been working to arrive at a logical connection between a word and its meaning and this endeavor is often related to other fields of enquiry such as philosophy and religion. As long as questions such as 'what constitutes reality?' and 'what is the relationship between consciousness and cognition?', remain to perplex the human mind, a definitive answer to the question of ‘meaning’ will be elusive. At that depth of enquiry, Semantics can be seen an exploratory art rather than an accurate science, even as many of the fundamental aspects of linguistics have been understood.