Page 219 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

SEMANTICS

objectively, the same planet – Venus – can be referred to equally
appropriately as ‘the morning star’ and ‘the evening star’, since it has
the capacity to shine brightly both in the morning sky and in the
evening sky. Consequently, the two expressions – ‘the morning star’
and ‘the evening star’ – have an identical referent, although the sense
of each expression is of course quite different. More attention in
semantics has been given to the area of sense relations than to that of
reference, in line with Wittgenstein’s dictum: ‘the meaning of a word
is its use in the language’.
But ignoring either side of the contrast between sense and reference
tends to lead to unbalanced theories of meaning, and this can have
consequences that go beyond the domains of linguistic theory. It is
worth noting, for instance, that rival aesthetic theories can be divided
into two camps depending upon whether they tend to favour one or
the other side of the distinction between reference and sense: realist
theories favour art that appears to mirror or reflect reality in as direct a
way as possible; other more Formalist theories, however, stress the
conventionality of artistic representation and see art, and more
particularly literature, as a continual experiment with meaning (or
‘sense’). Contemporary literary theory tends to be very strong on the
conventional bases of meaning, so much so that at times it seems to
deny the possibility of any reality at all outside language. At the very
least, it insists that reality is not mediated to us directly, but is
constructed through acts of meanings, so that we have no direct access
to it outside of language. One pitfall of this position is that it can lead
to a species of idealism in which reality is spoken into existence
through language, and arguments about interpretation become
avowedly subjective, to the exclusion of culture and history as material
process.
In modern semantics sense relations have been treated in terms of
the following major relationships that words can have with each
other.
. Synonomy: expressions which can be used in identical ways are
considered synonymous, by which criterion an expression such as
to ponder is held to be synonymous with to meditate,or loutish is held
to be synonymous with uncouth.
. Antonymy: expressions which reverse the meaning of each other in
some way are considered to be antonymous. Thus, the pairs
woman/man, fast/slow, up/down, good/bad all express relations of
antonymy.
. Hyponomy: expressions may also operate in hierarchical relations of

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