GEOFFREY LEECH’S SEVEN TYPES OF MEANINGS

Abstract

Geoffrey Leech (1936-2014), one of the famous British language philosophers, published a very useful book on language study titled ‘Semantics: A Study of Meaning’ in which the classification of meaning is made from the semantic point of view. He neatly expounded the theory of meaning and advocated seven types of meaning according to the functional role of the lexical items put together to form sentences. The fact of the matter is that meaning cannot be studied in an isolated manner. It has to be studied considering various sociolinguistic factors. Apart from conceptual meaning of the lexical items, phrases and sentences can have different meaning. While propounding the theory of meaning, Leech classified meaning into seven types such as denotative meaning, connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, collocative meaning and thematic meaning. While studying the native English language he came to realize that the native speakers of English have meanings in their minds depending on the form of the words. Here, he makes a distinction between sentence meaning and utterance meaning. As far as this article is concerned, the classification of meanings into seven types is associated with sentence meaning.

Key Words: Language, meaning, semantics, classification, sociolinguistic, lexical items, denotative, connotative, thematic, reflected, collocative, affective,