A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation.
A connotation is frequently described as either positive or negative, with regard to its pleasing or displeasing emotional connection. [1] For example, a stubborn person may be described as being either strong-willed or pig-headed; although these have the same literal meaning (stubborn), strong-willed connotes admiration for the level of someone's will (a positive connotation), while pig-headed connotes frustration in dealing with someone (a negative connotation).
"Connotation" branches into a mixture 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, judgement or feelings. [2]
In logic and semantics, connotation is roughly synonymous with intension . Connotation is often contrasted with denotation , which is more or less synonymous with extension . 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). A word's denotation is the collection of things it refers to; its connotation is what it implies about the things it is used to refer to (a second level of meanings is termed connotative). The connotation of dog is (something like) four-legged canine carnivore. So, saying, "You are a dog" would connote that you were ugly or aggressive rather than literally denoting you as a canine. [3]
It is often useful to avoid words with strong connotations (especially pejorative or 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. [4]
Semiotic closure, as defined by Terry Eagleton, concerns "a sealed world of ideological stability, which repels the disruptive, decentered forces of language in the name of an imaginary unity. Signs are ranked by a certain covert violence into rigidly hierarchical order. . . . The process of forging ‘representations’ always involves this arbitrary closing of the signifying chain, constricting the free play of the signifier to a spuriously determinate meaning which can then be received by the subject as natural and inevitable". [5] [ relevant? ]
 The denotation is a representation of a cartoon heart. The connotation is a symbol of love and affection. |
 The denotation of this example is a red rose with a green stem. The connotation is that it is a symbol of passion and love – this is what the rose represents. |
 The denotation is a brown cross. The connotation is a symbol of religion, according to the media connotation. However, to be more specific this is a symbol of Christianity. |
In any of several fields of study that treat the use of signs—for example, in linguistics, logic, mathematics, semantics, semiotics, and philosophy of language—an intension is any property or quality connoted by a word, phrase, or another symbol. In the case of a word, the word's definition often implies an intension. For instance, the intensions of the word plant include properties such as "being composed of cellulose ", "alive", and "organism", among others. A comprehension is the collection of all such intensions.
In the philosophy of language, a proper name – examples include a name of a specific person or place – is a name which ordinarily is taken to uniquely identify its referent in the world. As such it presents particular challenges for theories of meaning, and it has become a central problem in analytic philosophy. The common-sense view was originally formulated by John Stuart Mill in A System of Logic (1843), where he defines it as "a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about but not of telling anything about it". This view was criticized when philosophers applied principles of formal logic to linguistic propositions. Gottlob Frege pointed out that proper names may apply to imaginary or nonexistent entities, without becoming meaningless, and he showed that sometimes more than one proper name may identify the same entity without having the same sense, so that the phrase "Homer believed the morning star was the evening star" could be meaningful and not tautological in spite of the fact that the morning star and the evening star identifies the same referent. This example became known as Frege's puzzle and is a central issue in the theory of proper names.
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words begin, start, commence, and initiate are all synonyms of one another: they are synonymous. The standard test for synonymy is substitution: one form can be replaced by another in a sentence without changing its meaning.
Literal and figurative language is a distinction that exists in all natural languages; it is studied within certain areas of language analysis, in particular stylistics, rhetoric, and semantics.
Loaded language is rhetoric used to influence an audience by using words and phrases with strong connotations. This type of language is very often made vague to more effectively invoke an emotional response and/or exploit stereotypes. Loaded words and phrases have significant emotional implications and involve strongly positive or negative reactions beyond their literal meaning.
In the philosophy of language, the distinction between sense and reference was an idea of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege in 1892, reflecting the two ways he believed a singular term may have meaning.
In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of a word or expression is its strictly literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of having high temperature. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning including connotation. For instance, the word "warm" may evoke calmness, coziness, or kindness but these associations are not part of the word's denotation. Similarly, an expression's denotation is separate from pragmatic inferences it may trigger. For instance, describing something as "warm" often implicates that it is not hot, but this is once again not part of the word's denotation.
A sememe is a semantic language unit of meaning, analogous to a morpheme. The concept is relevant in structural semiotics.
Semantic prosody, also discourse prosody, describes the way in which certain seemingly neutral words can be perceived with positive or negative associations through frequent occurrences with particular collocations. Coined in analogy to linguistic prosody, popularised by Bill Louw.
Iyaric, also called Dread Talk or Rasta Talk, is a form of language constructed by members of the Rastafari movement through alteration of vocabulary. When Africans were taken into captivity as a part of the slave trade, English was imposed as a colonial language and their traditional African languages were lost. In defiance, the Rastafari movement created a modified English vocabulary and dialect, with the aim of liberating their language from its history as a tool of colonial oppression. This is accomplished by avoiding sounds and words with negative connotations, such as "back", and changing them to positive ones. Iyaric sometimes also plays a liturgical role among Rastas, in addition to Amharic and Ge'ez.
In the broadest sense, a code is a correspondence or rule between patterns. It can be an arrangement of physical matter, including the electromagnetic spectrum, that stores the potential to convey meaning. For instance, the pattern of vibration we call 'sound' when activated within the mind, triggers an image; say the word "cat". Also, seeing the shapes we call 'letters' forming the word makes one think of or visualize a cat. The words upon the screen were conceived in the human mind, and then translated into computer code.
In semiotics, the commutation test is used to analyze a signifying system. The test identifies signifiers as well as their signifieds, value and significance.
In semiotics, denotation is the surface or the literal meaning, the definition most likely to appear in a dictionary.
In semiotics, connotation arises when the denotative relationship between a signifier and its signified is inadequate to serve the needs of the community. A second level of meanings is termed connotative. These meanings are not objective representations of the thing, but new usages produced by the language group.
A referential theory of meaning is a theory of language that claims that the meaning of a word or expression lies in what it points out in the world. Ex, The word tree may have an exterior meaning from the one always intended, that is, tree can be translated into different form of meaning .The object denoted by a word is called its referent. Criticisms of this position are often associated with Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Mood congruence is the consistency between a person's emotional state with the broader situations and circumstances being experienced by the persons at that time. By contrast, mood incongruence occurs when the individual's reactions or emotional state appear to be in conflict with the situation. In the context of psychosis, hallucinations and delusions may be considered mood congruent or incongruent.
In semiotics, the study of sign processes (semiosis), the meaning of a sign is its place in a sign relation, in other words, the set of roles that the sign occupies within a given sign relation.
K-B-D is a triliteral Semitic root with the common meaning of to "be heavy", and thence "be important; honour, majesty, glory".
In rhetoric, emotive or emotional conjugation is a rhetorical technique used to create an intrinsic bias towards or against a piece of information. Bias is created by using the emotional connotation of a word to prime a response from the audience by creating a loaded statement. When used seriously, such loaded language can lend false support to an argument through emotional connotation and implication rather than through fact.
The Bhūtasaṃkhyā system is a method of recording numbers in Sanskrit using common nouns having connotations of numerical values. The method was introduced already in astronomical texts in antiquity, but it was expanded and developed during the medieval period. A kind of rebus system, bhūtasaṃkhyā has also been called the "concrete number notation".