This document discusses meaning as it relates to signs in linguistics. It covers several key topics: 1) Words establish semantic relationships like denotation and connotation that give meaning to the world. 2) A sign is the relationship between a signifier (word) and signified (object/idea), which is mediated by codes and symbols. There is an arbitrary nature to this relationship. 3) Cultural communities encode their experience in language differently, leading to differences in meanings across languages and cultures.

1. LINGUISTICS
CONTENT
2- Meaning as sign
IFDC San Luis
2013
Perez del viso, Adela

2. MEANING AS SIGN.
“SIGNS
establish between words
and things various semantic
relations of
denotation, connotation or
iconicity that GIVE MEANING TO
THE WORLD”. CLaiRE
Kramsch, Language and Culture.
Oxford U.P.

3. MEANING AS SIGN.
•The
linguistic sign.
•The meaning of sign.
•Cultural “encodings”.
•Semantic cohesion.
•Non- arbitrary nature of signs.
•Symbols.

4. THE LINGUISTIC SIGN.
MEDIATION
between men and environment.
SIGNIFIER, SIGNIFIED, SIGN. CODE. SYMBOLS.
SIGN: Neither the word nor the object:
relation between the two.
Nothing necessary. Arbitrariness.
Asymmetrical dualism.
MEANING OF
SIGNS
Denotation.
Connotation
Iconic Meaning.
WHACK!, “WOW!”

5. CULTURAL ENCODINGS
Every
cultural community encodes their
experience differently.
The code “cuts” reality differently.
Ex: British English and American English as
regards stomach.
Bavarian German and English as regards
foot.
Different cultural
associations. Ex: Dusha
and Soul (Russian/
English).
ENCODING
Differs according to
speech and social
community.

6. SEMANTIC COHESION.
Cohesive
devices. Co-text and Prior Text.
Cohesion and Coherence.
Metaphors: they have accumulated over
time in a community´s store of semantic
knowledge.
Metonimia.
ARBITRARINESS AND THE
NON-ARBITRARY NATURE
OF SIGNS.

7. SYMBOLS.
Signs
become not only naturalized but
conventionalized as well.
DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM, CHOICE
They simplify the originally messy group
of events into CONVENTIONALIZED
SYMBOLS.
Ex: French Revolution, May´68, The
Holocaust.
PASSAGE OF TIME
IDEOLOGY.

8. SOURCES
KRAMSCH,
C Language and
Culture, OXFORD U.P. 2006, P.20
 NURCAN KAZAK GROUP: Language and
Culture. In YouTube.
THANK
YOU!!