Meaning, context and co-text

1. CONTENT
 Meaning
 Context
 Co-text

2. WHAT IS MEANING
 Meaning is always the meaning of something. Words have
meaning, phrases have meaning and sentences have
meaning as well as actions and deeds.
 What is meant by a word, text, concept, or action.
 “The word has several different meanings"

3. TYPES OF MEANING
1. Conceptual meaning
2. Connotative meaning
3. Affective meaning
4. Collocative meaning
5. Associative meaning
6. Thematic meaning

4. CONCEPTUAL MEANING
1. Conceptual Meaning(Denotative meaning):
 The central factor or the core meaning in linguistic
communication.
 The part of meaning of words, phrases or sentences that
relate it to phenomena in the real world or in a fictional or
possible world. EX: Bird can be described as a flying, two
legged, and egg laying creature, with feathers and wings.

5. CONNOTATIVE
MEANING:
 What an expression means over and above its purely
conceptual content.
 The additional meaning that a word or a sentence has beyond
its central meaning.
 Show people`s emotions and attitudes toward what a word or a
phrase refers to.
 Example: Child= young human being. Affectionate, amusing,
lovable, sweet, noisy…etc. It is also called Emotive meaning.

6. AFFECTIVE MEANING:
 A meaning which a piece of language conveys about the social
circumstances of its use.
 Conveyed through the conceptual or connotative content of the words
used. Example: “I hate for it!”

7. COLLOCATIVE
MEANING:
 Raises in cases of multiple conceptual meanings, when one sense
of a word forms part of our response to another sense.
 Conventionality of collocation between word and word, or word and
meaning.
 Formed by people`s habit in using language in long term process.
Eample: “Heavy smoker” not “Heavy writer” but “prolific writer”.
(we cannot use the word heavy for both expressions)

8. ASSOCIATIVE
MEANING:
 The total of all the possible meanings a person thinks
of when hears a word.
 Paradise Heaven Beautiful life Love Grace…etc.

9. THEMATIC MEANING:
 Communicated by the way in which a speaker or writer
organizes the message, in terms of ordering, focus, and
emphasis.
 Example: Passive vs. active
 Henry broke the window.
 The window was broken by Henry.

10. CONTEXT:
 The surroundings, circumstances, environment,
background or settings that determine, specify, or clarify
the meaning of an event or other occurrence.
 The circumstances that form the setting for an event,
statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully
understood.
 Example: "the proposals need to be considered in the
context of new European directives"

11. FACTORS
 An essential factor in the interpretation of utterances and
expressions. The most important aspects of context are
(1) Preceding and following utterances and/or expressions (‘co-
text’),
(2) The immediate physical situation,
(3) The wider situation, including social and power relations,
and
(4) Knowledge presumed shared between speaker and hearer

12. TYPES OF CONTEXT
 Verbal & non-verbal environment of speech, including 3
types:
a. Linguistic context (co-text):
b. Context of situation: non-verbal immediate environment of
speech
c. Context of culture: general, non-verbal permanent
environment of speech including background cultural knowledge

14. COTEXT:
 The text that surrounds the node, or word of interest, in
a KWIC(key words in context)

15. BASIC DIFFERENCE:
 Co-text is specifically the words surrounding
something.
 Context is that, and more general information
as well.

16. THANK YOU