Denotation and connotation
The terms, denotation and connotation, are used to convey and distinguish between two different kinds of meanings or extensions of a word. A denotation is the strict, literal, definition of a word, devoid of any emotion, attitude, or color. The connotation of a word or term adds elements of emotion, attitude, or color. The meaning or use of denotation and connotation depends partly on the field of study.The meaning of denotation and connotation
- In media-studies terminology, denotation is the first level of analysis: What the audience can visually see on a page. Denotation often refers to something literal, and avoids being a metaphor. Here it is usually coupled with connotation, which is the second level of analysis, being what the denotation represents.
- In logic, linguistics, and semiotics, a denotation of a word or phrase is a part of its meaning; however, several parts of meaning may take this name, depending on the contrast being drawn:
- Denotation and connotation are either
- in basic semantics and literary theory, the literal and figurative meanings of a word, or,
- in philosophy, logic and parts of linguistics, the extension and intension of a word
- Denotation can be synonymous with reference, and connotation with sense, in the sense and reference distinction in philosophy of language.
- In Computer science, denotational semantics is contrasted with operational semantics.
- In Semiotics, denotation also has its own meaning.
The distinction between connotation and denotation corresponds roughly to Gottlob Frege's ground-breaking and much-studied distinction between Sinn (sense) and Bedeutung (reference).
Bertrand Russell, in 1905, published a seminal article on the topic of denotation, entitled "On Denoting."
Denotation often links with symbolism, as the denotation of a particular media text often represents something further; a hidden meaning (or an enigma code) is often hidden in a media text.
Examples
In order to understand fully the difference between denotation and connotation in media studies and semiotics, it is helpful to examine some examples: |
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Definition of Connotation
A connotation is a subjective cultural and/or emotional coloration in addition to the explicit or denotative meaning of any specific word or phrase in a language.Usage
Within contemporary society, connotation branches into a culmination of different meanings. These could include the contrast of a word or phrase with its primary, literal meaning (known as a denotation), with what that word or phrase specifically denotes. The connotation essentially relates to how anything may be associated with a word or phrase, for example, an implied value judgment or feelings.- A stubborn person may be described as being either "strong-willed" or "pig-headed." Although these have the same literal meaning (that is, stubborn), strong-willed connotes admiration for someone's convictions, while pig-headed connotes frustration in dealing with someone. Likewise, "used car" and "previously owned car" have the same literal meaning, but many dealerships prefer the latter, since it is thought to have fewer negative connotations.
- It is often useful to avoid words with strong connotations (especially disparaging ones) when striving to achieve a neutral point of view. A desire for more positive connotations, or fewer negative ones, is one of the main reasons for using euphemisms. (Although, not all theories of linguistic meaning honor the distinction between literal meaning and connotation).
Logic
In logic and in some branches of semantics, connotation is more or less synonymous with intension. Connotation is often contrasted with denotation, which is more or less synonymous with extension. A word's extension is the collection of things it refers to; its intension is what it implies about the things it is used to refer to. So, the denotation or extension of "dog" is just the collection of all the dogs that exist. The connotation or intension of "dog" is (something like) "four-legged canine carnivore." Alternatively, the connotation of the word may be thought of as the set of all its possible referents (as opposed to merely the actual ones). So saying, "You are a dog," would imply that the subject was ugly or aggressive rather than a literal canine.Implication
Implication or entailment is used in propositional logic and predicate logic to describe a relationship between two sentences or sets of sentences, in which one sentence or set of sentences is said to "lead to" or "imply" or "entail" the other sentence or set of sentences, and the other is said to "follow from" or be "derived from" or be "entailed by" or be "implied by" the former.Logical Implication
states that the set A of sentences logically entails the set B of sentences. It can be read as "B can be proven from A."
Definition: A logically entails B if, by assuming all sentences in A are true, and applying a finite sequence of inference rules to them (for example, those from propositional calculus), one can derive all sentences in B.
Semantic Implication
states that the set A of sentences semantically entails the set B of sentences.
Formal definition: the set A entails the set B if and only if, in every model in which all sentences in A are true, all sentences in B are also true. In diagram form, it looks like this:
We need the definition of entailment to demand that every model of A must also be a model of B because a formal system like a knowledge base can't possibly know the interpretations which a user might have in mind when they ask whether a set of facts (A) entails a proposition (B).
In pragmatics (linguistics), entailment has a different, but closely related, meaning.
If
for a formula X then X is said to be "valid" or "tautological."Relationship between Semantic and Logical Implication
Ideally, semantic implication and logical implication would be equivalent. However, this may not always be feasible. (See Gödel's incompleteness theorem, which states that some languages (such as arithmetic) contain true but unprovable sentences.) In such a case, it is useful to break the equivalence down into its two parts:A deductive system S is complete for a language L if and only if
implies 
: that is, if all valid arguments are provable.A deductive system S is sound for a language L if and only if
implies : that is, if no invalid arguments are provable.Material Conditional
In propositional calculus, or logical calculus in mathematics, the material conditional or the implies operator is a binary truth-functional logical operator yielding the formIf a then c,
where a and c are statement variables (to be replaced by any meaningful indicative sentence of the language). In a statement of this form, the first term, in this case a, is called the antecedent and the second term, in this case c, is called the consequent. The truth of the antecedent is a sufficient condition for the truth of the consequent, while the truth of the consequent is a necessary condition for the truth of the antecedent.
The operator is symbolized using a right-arrow "→" (or sometimes a horseshoe "⊃"). "If A then B" is written like this:
Relationship with Material Implication
In many cases, entailment corresponds to material implication: that is,
if and only if 
. However, this is not true in some many-valued logics.Standard logic is two-valued, meaning that statements can be only true or false, and every statement is either true or false. So if a statement is not false it is true, and if it is not true it is false. In many-valued logics those conditions do not necessarily hold.
Symbolization
A common exercise for an introductory logic text to include is symbolizations. These exercises give a student a sentence or paragraph of text in ordinary language which the student has to translate into the symbolic language. This is done by recognizing the ordinary language equivalents of the logical terms, which usually include the material conditional, disjunction, conjunction, negation, and (frequently) biconditional. More advanced logic books and later chapters of introductory volumes often add identity, Existential quantification, and Universal quantification.Different phrases used to identify the material conditional in ordinary language include if, only if, given that, provided that, supposing that, implies, even if, and in case. Many of these phrases are indicators of the antecedent, but others indicate the consequent. It is important to identify the "direction of implication" correctly. For example, "A only if B" is captured by the statement
A → B,
but "A, if B" is correctly captured by the statement
B → A
When doing symbolization exercises, it is often required that the student give a scheme of abbreviation that shows which sentences are replaced by which statement letters. For example, an exercise reading "Kermit is a frog only if muppets are animals" yields the solution:
A → B, A - Kermit is a frog. B - Muppets are animals.
Truth table
The truth value of expressions involving the material conditional is defined by the following truth table:| p | q | p → q |
|---|---|---|
| F | F | T |
| F | T | T |
| T | F | F |
| T | T | T |
Comparison with other conditional statements
The use of the operator is stipulated by logicians, and, as a result, can yield some unexpected truths. For example, any material conditional statement with a false antecedent is true. So the statement "2 is odd implies 2 is even" is true. Similarly, any material conditional with a true consequent is true. So the statement, "If pigs fly, then Paris is in France" is true.These unexpected truths arise because speakers of English (and other natural languages) are tempted to equivocate between the material conditional and the indicative conditional, or other conditional statements, like the counterfactual conditional and the material biconditional. This temptation can be lessened by reading conditional statements without using the words "if" and "then." The most common way to do this is to read A → B as "it is not the case that A and/or it is the case that B" or, more simply, "A is false and/or B is true." (This equivalent statement is captured in logical notation by
, using negation and disjunction.)Ambiguity Definition
Ambiguity or fallacy of ambiguity is a word, phrase, or statement which contains more than one meaning.Ambiguous words or statements lead to vagueness and confusion, and shape the basis for instances of unintentional humor. For instance, it is ambiguous to say “I rode a black horse in red pajamas,” because it may lead us to think the horse was wearing red pajamas. The sentence becomes clear when it is restructured “Wearing red pajamas, I rode a black horse.”
Similarly, same words with different meanings can cause ambiguity e.g. “John took off his trousers by the bank.” It is funny if we confuse one meaning of “bank” which is a building, to another meaning, being “an edge of a river”. Context usually resolves any ambiguity in such cases.
Common Ambiguity Examples
Below are some common examples of ambiguity:- A good life depends on a liver – Liver may be an organ or simply a living person.
- Foreigners are hunting dogs – It is unclear whether dogs were being hunted or foreigners are being spoken of as dogs.
- Each of us saw her duck – It is not clear whether the word “duck” refers to an action of ducking or a duck that is a bird.
- The passerby helps dog bite victim – Is the passerby helping a dog bite someone? Or is he helping a person bitten by a dog? It’s not clear.
Examples of Ambiguity in Literature
Although ambiguity is considered a flaw in writing, many writers use this technique to allow readers to understand their works in a variety of ways, giving them depth and complexity. Let us analyze some ambiguity examples in literature.Example
Read the following excerpt from “The Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger:“I ran all the way to the main gate, and then I waited a second till I got my breath. I have no wind, if you want to know the truth. I’m quite a heavy smoker, for one thing—that is, I used to be. They made me cut it out. Another thing, I grew six and a half inches last year. That’s also how I practically got t.b. and came out here for all these goddam checkups and stuff. I’m pretty healthy though.”The words “they” and “here” used by the speaker are ambiguous. But the readers are allowed to presume from the context that “they” might be the professionals helping out Holden and “here” might be a rehabilitation center.
Example
“The Sick Rose”, a short lyric written by William Blake, is full of ambiguities:“O Rose thou art sick.Many of the words in the above lines show ambiguity. We cannot say for sure what “crimson bed of joy” means; neither can we be exact about the interpretation of “dark secret love”. The ambiguous nature of such phrases allows readers to explore for deeper meanings of the poem.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy”
Some of those who have analyzed this poem believe that “Has found out thy bed, Of crimson joy” refers to making love.
Function of Ambiguity
Ambiguity in literature serves the purpose of lending a deeper meaning to a literary work. By introducing ambiguity in their works, writers give liberty to the readers to use their imagination to explore meanings. This active participation of the readers involves them in the prose or poetry they read.AMBIGUITY
A word, phrase, or sentence is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning. The word 'light', for example, can mean not very heavy or not very dark. Words like 'light', 'note', 'bear' and 'over' are lexically ambiguous. They induce ambiguity in phrases or sentences in which they occur, such as 'light suit' and 'The duchess can't bear children'. However, phrases and sentences can be ambiguous even if none of their constituents is. The phrase 'porcelain egg container' is structurally ambiguous, as is the sentence 'The police shot the rioters with guns'. Ambiguity can have both a lexical and a structural basis, as with sentences like 'I left her behind for you' and 'He saw her duck'.
The notion of ambiguity has philosophical applications. For example, identifying an ambiguity can aid in solving a philosophical problem. Suppose one wonders how two people can have the same idea, say of a unicorn. This can seem puzzling until one distinguishes 'idea' in the sense of a particular psychological occurrence, a mental representation, from 'idea' in the sense of an abstract, shareable concept. On the other hand, gratuitous claims of ambiguity can make for overly simple solutions. Accordingly, the question arises of how genuine ambiguities can be distinguished from spurious ones. Part of the answer consists in identifying phenomena with which ambiguity may be confused, such as vagueness, unclarity, inexplicitness and indexicality.
1. Types of ambiguity
Although people are sometimes said to be ambiguous in how they use language, ambiguity is, strictly speaking, a property of linguistic expressions. A word, phrase, or sentence is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning. Obviously this definition does not say what meanings are or what it is for an expression to have one (or more than one). For a particular language, this information is provided by a grammar, which systematically pairs forms with meanings, ambiguous forms with more than one meaning (see MEANING and SEMANTICS).
There are two types of ambiguity, lexical and structural. Lexical ambiguity is by far the more common. Everyday examples include nouns like 'chip', 'pen' and 'suit', verbs like 'call', 'draw' and 'run', and adjectives like 'deep', 'dry' and 'hard'. There are various tests for ambiguity. One test is having two unrelated antonyms, as with 'hard', which has both 'soft' and 'easy' as opposites. Another is the conjunction reduction test. Consider the sentence, 'The tailor pressed one suit in his shop and one in the municipal court'. Evidence that the word 'suit' (not to mention 'press') is ambiguous is provided by the anomaly of the 'crossed interpretation' of the sentence, on which 'suit' is used to refer to an article of clothing and 'one' to a legal action.
The above examples of ambiguity are each a case of one word with more than one meaning. However, it is not always clear when we have only one word. The verb 'desert' and the noun 'dessert', which sound the same but are spelled differently, count as distinct words (they are homonyms). So do the noun 'bear' and the verb 'bear', even though they not only sound the same but are spelled the same. These examples may be clear cases of homonymy, but what about the noun 'respect' and the verb 'respect' or the preposition 'over' and the adjective 'over'? Are the members of these pairs homonyms or different forms of the same word? There is no general consensus on how to draw the line between cases of one ambiguous word and cases of two homonyous words. Perhaps the difference is ultimately arbitrary.
Sometimes one meaning of a word is derived from another. For example, the cognitive sense of 'see' seems derived from its visual sense. The sense of 'weigh' in 'He weighed the package' is derived from its sense in 'The package weighed two pounds'. Similarly, the transitive senses of 'burn', 'fly' and 'walk' are derived from their intransitive senses. Now it could be argued that in each of these cases the derived sense does not really qualify as a second meaning of the word but is actually the result of a lexical operation on the underived sense. This argument is plausible to the extent that the phenomenon is systematic and general, rather than peculiar to particular words. Lexical semantics has the task of identifying and characterizing such systematic phemena. It is also concerned to explain the rich and subtle semantic behavior of common and highly flexible words like the verbs 'do' and 'put' and the prepositions 'at', 'in' and 'to'. Each of these words has uses which are so numerous yet so closely related that they are often described as 'polysemous' rather than ambiguous.
Structural ambiguity occurs when a phrase or sentence has more than one underlying structure, such as the phrases 'Tibetan history teacher', 'a student of high moral principles' and 'short men and women', and the sentences 'The girl hit the boy with a book' and 'Visiting relatives can be boring'. These ambiguities are said to be structural because each such phrase can be represented in two structurally different ways, e.g., '[Tibetan history] teacher' and 'Tibetan [history teacher]'. Indeed, the existence of such ambiguities provides strong evidence for a level of underlying syntactic structure (see SYNTAX). Consider the structurally ambiguous sentence, 'The chicken is ready to eat', which could be used to describe either a hungry chicken or a broiled chicken. It is arguable that the operative reading depends on whether or not the implicit subject of the infinitive clause 'to eat' is tied anaphorically to the subject ('the chicken') of the main clause.
It is not always clear when we have a case of structural ambiguity. Consider, for example, the elliptical sentence, 'Perot knows a richer man than Trump'. It has two meanings, that Perot knows a man who is richer than Trump and that Perot knows man who is richer than any man Trump knows, and is therefore ambiguous. But what about the sentence 'John loves his mother and so does Bill'? It can be used to say either that John loves John's mother and Bill loves Bill's mother or that John loves John's mother and Bill loves John's mother. But is it really ambiguous? One might argue that the clause 'so does Bill' is unambiguous and may be read unequivocally as saying in the context that Bill does the same thing that John does, and although there are two different possibilities for what counts as doing the same thing, these alternatives are not fixed semantically. Hence the ambiguity is merely apparent and better described as semantic underdetermination.
Although ambiguity is fundamentally a property of linguistic expressions, people are also said to be ambiguous on occasion in how they use language. This can occur if, even when their words are unambiguous, their words do not make what they mean uniquely determinable. Strictly speaking, however, ambiguity is a semantic phenomenon, involving linguistic meaning rather than speaker meaning (see MEANING AND COMMUNICATION); 'pragmatic ambiguity' is an oxymoron. Generally when one uses ambiguous words or sentences, one does not consciously entertain their unintended meanings, although there is psycholinguistic evidence that when one hears ambiguous words one momentarily accesses and then rules out their irrelevant senses. When people use ambiguous language, generally its ambiguity is not intended. Occasionally, however, ambiguity is deliberate, as with an utterance of 'I'd like to see more of you' when intended to be taken in more than one way in the very same context of utterance.
2. Ambiguity contrasted
It is a platitude that what your words convey 'depends on what you mean'. This suggests that one can mean different things by what one says, but it says nothing about the variety of ways in which this is possible. Semantic ambiguity is one such way, but there are others: homonymy (mentioned above), vagueness, relativity, indexicality, nonliterality, indirection and inexplicitness. All these other phenomena illustrate something distinct from multiplicity of linguistic meaning.
An expression is vague if it admits of borderline cases (see VAGUENESS). Terms like 'bald', 'heavy' and 'old' are obvious examples, and their vagueness is explained by the fact that they apply to items on fuzzy regions of a scale. Terms that express cluster concepts, like 'intelligent', 'athletic' and 'just', are vague because their instances are determined by the application of several criteria, no one of which is decisive.
Relativity is illustrated by the words 'heavy' and 'old' (these are vague as well). Heavy people are lighter than nonheavy elephants, and old cats can are younger than some young people. A different sort of relativity occurs with sentences like 'Jane is finished' and 'John will be late'. Obviously one cannot be finished or late simpliciter but only finished with something or late for something. This does not show that the words 'finished' and 'late' are ambiguous (if they were, they would be ambiguous in as many ways as there are things one can be finished with or things one can be late for), but only that such a sentence is semantically underdeterminate--it must be used to mean more than what the sentence means.
Indexical terms, like 'you', 'here' and 'tomorrow', have fixed meaning but variable reference. For example, the meaning of the word 'tomorrow' does not change from one day to the next, though of course its reference does (see DEMONSTRATIVES AND INDEXICALS).
Nonliterality, indirection and inexplicitness are further ways in which what a speaker means is not uniquely determined by what his words mean (see SPEECH ACTS). They can give rise to unclarity in communication, as might happen with utterances of 'You're the icing on my cake', 'I wish you could sing longer and louder', and 'Nothing is on TV tonight'. These are not cases of linguistic ambiguity but can be confused with it because speakers are often said to be ambiguous.
3. Philosophical relevance
Philosophical distinctions can be obscured by unnoticed ambiguities. So it is important to identify terms that do doubtle duty. For example, there is a kind of ambiguity, often described as the 'act/object' or the 'process/product' ambiguity, exhibited by everyday terms like 'building', 'shot' and 'writing'. Confusions in philosophy of language and mind can result from overlooking this ambiguity in terms like 'inference', 'statement' and 'thought'. Another common philosophical ambiguity is the type/token distinction. Everyday terms like 'animal', 'book' and 'car' apply both to types and to instances (tokens) of those types. The same is true of linguistic terms like 'sentence', 'word' and 'letter' and to philosophically important terms like 'concept', 'event' and 'mental state' (see TYPE/TOKEN DISTINCTION).
Although unnoticed ambiguities can create philosophical problems, ambiguity is philosophically important also because philosophers often make spurious claims of it. Indeed, the linguist Charles Ruhl has argued that certain ostensible ambiguities, including act/object and type/token, are really cases of lexical underdetermination. Saul Kripke laments the common strategem, which he calls 'the lazy man's approach in philosophy', of appealing to ambiguity to escape from a philosophical quandary, and H. P. Grice urges philosophers to hone the 'Modified Occam's Razor: senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity'. He illustrates its value by shaving a sense off the logical connective 'or', which is often thought to have both an inclusive and exclusive sense. Grice argues that, given its inclusive meaning, its exclusive use can be explained entirely on pragmatic grounds (see IMPLICATURE). Another example, prominent in modern philosophy of language, is the ambiguity alleged to arise from the distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions (see DESCRIPTIONS). Less prominent but not uncommon is the suggestion that pronouns are ambiguous as between their anaphoric and their deictic use (see PRONOUNS AND ANAPHORA). So, for example, it is suggested that a sentence like 'Oedipus loves his mother' has two 'readings', i.e., is ambiguous, because it can be used to mean either that Oedipus loves his own mother or that Oedipus loves the mother of some contextually specified male. However, this seems to be an insufficient basis for the claim of ambiguity. After all, being previously mentioned is just another way of being contextually specified. Accordingly, there is nothing semantically special in this example about the use of 'his' to refer to Oedipus.
Claims of structural ambiguity can also be controversial. Of particular importance are claims of scope ambiguity, which are commonly made but rarely defended. A sentence like 'Everybody loves somebody' is said to exhibit a scope ambiguity because it can be used to mean either that for each person, there is somebody that that person loves or (however unlikely) that there is somebody that everybody loves. These uses may be represented, respectively, by the logical formulas '("x)(Ey)(Lxy)' and '(Ey)("x)(Lxy)'. It is generally assumed that because different logical formulas are needed to represented the different ways in which an utterance of such a sentence can be taken, the sentence itself has two distinct logical forms (see LOGICAL FORM). Sustaining this claim of ambiguity requires identifying a level of linguistic description at which the sentence can be assigned two distinct structures. Some grammarians have posited a level of LF, corresponding to what philosophers call logical form, at which relative scope of quantified noun phrases may be represented. However, LF of this kind does not explain scope ambiguities that philosophers attribute to sentences containing modal operators and psychological verbs, such as 'The next president might be a woman' and 'Ralph wants a sloop' (see SCOPE). An utterance of such a sentence can be taken in either of two ways, but it is arguable that the sentence is not ambiguous but merely semantically underdeterminate with respect to its two alleged 'readings'.
Notwithstanding the frequency in philosophy of unwarranted and often arbitrary claims of ambiguity, it cannot be denied that some terms really are ambiguous. The nouns 'bank' and 'suit' are clear examples, and so are the verbs 'bank' and 'file'. Philosophers sometimes lament the prevalence of ambiguity in natural languages and yearn for an ideal language in which it is absent. But ambiguity is a fact of linguistic life. Despite the potentially endless supply of words, many words do double duty or more. And despite the unlimited number of sentences, many have several meanings, and their utterance must be disambiguated in light of the speaker's likely intentions.
link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denotation
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Denotation_and_connotation
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Implication
http://literarydevices.net/ambiguity/
http://online.sfsu.edu/kbach/ambguity.html
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