science

The Meaning of Meaning

The Meaning of Meaning is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Meaning of Meaning rather than just read about it. In short: The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (1923) is a book by C. K.

Key takeaways

The Meaning of Meaning belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Meaning of Meaning to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Meaning of Meaning from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (1923) is a book by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. It is accompanied by two supplementary essays by Bronisław Malinowski and F. G. Crookshank. The conception of the book arose during a two-hour conversation between Ogden and Richards held on a staircase in a house next to the Cavendish Laboratories at 11 pm on Armistice Day, 1918.

Overview The Meaning of Meaning was first published in 1923 and has been used as a textbook in many fields including linguistics, philosophy, language, cognitive science and most recently semantics and semiotics in general. The book has rarely been out of print — Winston Churchill's interest in Basic English ensured that it was reprinted even at the height of wartime paper-rationing. A critical edition prepared by W. Terrence Gordon was published in 1994 as part of the five-volume set C. K. Ogden and Linguistics (London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1994). It follows the first edition of 1923, recording all earlier and later variants. A reading edition prepared by John Constable appeared in 2001 as part of the ten-volume I. A. Richards: Selected Works, 1919-1938 (London and New York: Routledge, 2001). It is "a correct and modernized text of the last revised edition produced by the authors". Constable's version, subsequently released in paperback and ebook formats, has become the standard trade edition. The full publication history up to 1990, including serialised publication in The Cambridge Magazine prior to the first edition of the book, is in W. Terrence Gordon's, C. K. Ogden: A Bio-bibliographical Study. Richards sets forth a contextual theory of Signs: that Words and Things are connected “through their occurrence together with things, their linkage with them in a ‘context’ that Symbols come to play that important part in our life [even] the source of all our power over the external world” (47). In this context system, Richards develops a tri-part semiotics—symbol, thought and referent with three relations between them (thought to symbol=correct, thought–referent=adequate, symbol–reference=true) (11). Symbols are “those signs which men use to communicate one with another and as instruments of thought, occupy a peculiar place” (23). “All discursive symbolization involves […] weaving together of contexts into higher contexts” (220). So for a word to be understood “requires that it form a context with further experiences” (210). The book later influenced A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic, an introduction to logical positivism, and both the Richards–Ogden book and the Ayer book in turn influenced Alec King and Martin Ketley in the writing of their book The Control of Language, which appeared in 1939, and which influenced C. S. Lewis in the writing of his defence of natural law and objective values, The Abolition of Man (1943).

See also Embodied cognition General semantics Gostak Pragmatics Psycholinguistics Semiotics Charles Sanders Peirce Hilary Putnam

References

External links The Meaning of Meaning at the Internet Archive.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Meaning of Meaning

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Meaning of Meaning claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Meaning of Meaning before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Meaning of Meaning ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Meaning of Meaning

In research: The Meaning of Meaning appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Meaning of Meaning in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Meaning of Meaning is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1923 English-language non-fiction books, 1923 non-fiction books, Books in semantics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Meaning of Meaning outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Meaning of Meaning in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Meaning of Meaning means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Meaning of Meaning out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Meaning of Meaning in simple terms?

The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (1923) is a book by C. K.

Why does The Meaning of Meaning matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Meaning of Meaning?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Meaning of Meaning.