Connotation as a speech device. Connotation: what it is, what the word means, where it is used, examples

(cm. MEANING). Sometimes also called (semantic) association. The connotation of a word reflects such a feature of the object it denotes, which, although it does not constitute necessary condition for the use of a given word, but is stably associated with the designated object in the minds of native speakers. For example, in many European languages the word for fox has connotations of “cunning” or “cunning.” It is clear that these signs are unimportant for this class of animals: in order to name some animal fox, we don't need to check whether it is tricky. Consequently, the sign of cunning is not included in the definition (interpretation) of this word, but nevertheless is stably associated with it in the language, as evidenced by at least the figurative use of the word fox(A) in relation to a cunning person. Connotations embody the assessment of the object or fact of reality that is accepted in a given language community and enshrined in the culture of a given society and reflect cultural traditions. Thus, cunning and deceit are constant characteristics of the fox as a character in fairy tales about animals in the folklore of many peoples.

Connotations are a type of so-called pragmatic information associated with a word, since they reflect not the objects and phenomena of the real world themselves, but an attitude towards them, a certain view of them. Unlike other types of pragmatic information, this attitude and view belongs to the speaker not as an individual, but as a representative of the linguistic community. So, for example, the word nag carries emotional-evaluative pragmatic information about the attitude of the speaker as a person to the object denoted by this word, and when using this word in relation to a certain horse, we inevitably express our own disapproving attitude towards it. In contrast, the speaker, using a lexeme that has a certain connotation, does not thereby express his personal point of view on the designated object; for example, using the word fox to designate an animal, we do not thereby express our opinion about the fox’s cunning. Nevertheless, the connection between the fox and cunning is present in the mind of the speaker in the area that in social psychology called the collective unconscious.

Other examples of connotations are the signs of “stubbornness” and “stupidity” in the word donkey, "monotony" of the word to nag, "speed" and "impermanence" in the word wind. The connotations of words reveal themselves in a number of phenomena belonging to language or speech. To the linguistic manifestations of connotations, i.e. those that are fixed in the language system include figurative meanings (cf. the meaning of “stupid and/or stubborn person” for the word donkey), usual comparisons (cf. mulish), meanings of derived words (cf. windy in the meaning of “frivolous”), the meaning of phraseological units (cf. like the wind blew away, which means the rapid disappearance of someone/something).

Among the objective manifestations of a word’s connotations are speech phenomena that are usually not recorded in dictionaries and grammars, but are reproduced with sufficient regularity in the process of generating and interpreting a statement with a given word. One of these phenomena is the relative uniformity in the interpretation by native speakers of the so-called pseudo-tautological constructions of the form X is X, For example A German is a German. From a logical point of view, such statements are tautological (true by virtue of their form), and therefore should be avoided in speech as uninformative: their predicate does not carry anything new in comparison with what is already expressed with the help of the subject. However, this does not happen; they are perceived as completely normal utterances, which are informative precisely due to the fact that in them the object X is implicitly assigned a property that is stably associated in the minds of speakers with objects of this type. In particular, the fact that most Russian speakers put approximately next meaning: “What do you want from a German, they are all so neat (or pedantic)”, shows that Germans with a high degree of regularity are attributed such properties as “neatness” and “pedantry”, which turn out to be consistently associated in the minds of Russian speakers with in a word German, certainly, without regard to essential features the class of persons denoted by this word.

Speech manifestations of the connotations of a word also include restrictions on the compatibility of this word with words expressing its connotations, within the framework of specific constructions that can be considered diagnostic in this regard. So , correct usage designs kind He X, but he's Y, as shown in a number of works on the semantics of conjunction But, implies that the speaker has the opinion that X is not normally Y-ness (= does not have the property of Y-ness). Since the connotation of the word X this is the feature that is stably associated with the object X denoted by this word, one should expect that, by substituting in this design instead of Y the name of the connotative feature of the object X, we will get a strange, anomalous statement it is enough to compare, for example, the strangeness of statements ? He is a bachelor, but he is unpretentious in everyday life / unkempt / careless with absolute naturalness He is a bachelor, but he is a very homely / well-groomed / very thorough and serious person.

The connotations of words are specific to each language. L.V. Shcherba noted the following difference between the Russian word water and the French word denoting the same substance eau: French eau, unlike Russian water, figurative use in the sense of “something devoid of content” is not typical, but French word has a meaning that can be more or less conveyed to Russians decoction (eau de rice"rice water", literally "rice water", eau d'orge"barley broth"), and from this it follows that Russian concept water emphasizes its nutritional uselessness, while the French eau this sign is completely alien. And there are a great many such examples. Yes, word elephant in Russian it has the connotation of “heaviness”, “clumsiness” (cf. stomp like an elephant;like a bull in a china shop), and in Sanskrit its translated equivalent is gadja connotation of “lightness”, “grace” (cf. gadjagamini "light gait", literally "elephant").

In the same language, words that are similar in meaning can also have very different connotations; this is well demonstrated by the example of differences in the connotations of a word belonging to the Russian specialist in lexical semantics Yu.D. Apresyan donkey(“stubbornness”, “stupidity”) from the connotations of the word ass(“willingness to work hard and without complaint”).

The capriciousness and unpredictability of connotations make it necessary to record them in a dictionary that strives for a complete description of the information associated with the word. see also SEMANTICS.

Year of publication and journal number:

A fundamental therapeutic principle we call positive connotation, was originally inspired by our need not to contradict ourselves when we paradoxically prescribe a symptom to an identified patient. Can we prescribe behavior after we ourselves have criticized it?

It was easy for us Not making negative connotations of an identified patient's symptom. However, the behavior of the rest of the family, especially the parents, which often seemed correlated with the symptom, presented us with a more difficult task. The template vision tempted arbitrary interpretations - associating a symptom with the symptomatic behavior of “others” in accordance with cause-and-effect dependencies. As a result, it often turned out that the patient's parents aroused our indignation and anger. This is the tyranny of the linguistic model from which we have had difficulty breaking free. We have had to force ourselves to fully understand the anti-therapeutic implications of this flawed epistemology.

In essence, the positive connotation of the identified patient's symptom in combination with the negative connotation of the symptomatic behavior of other family members is tantamount to arbitrarily dividing members of the family system into “good” and “bad” and thereby depriving oneself as a therapist of the opportunity to perceive the family as a systemic integrity.

Thus, it became clear to us that working in a systems model is only possible when we make a positive connotation together symptom of the identified patient and the symptomatic behavior of others - for example, telling the family that all the behavior we observe in it as a whole is caused, in our opinion, by one goal: maintaining the cohesion of the family group. As a result, the therapist becomes able to perceive everyone members of this group on the same level, avoiding involvement in alliances or factions that are constantly present in a dysfunctional family system. Dysfunctional families are indeed prone, especially in times of crisis, to splits and disagreements, characterized by standard labels such as “bad”, “sick”, “incapable”, “shame of society”, “shame of the family”, etc.

A natural question arises: why should the connotation be positive, that is, confirmation? Is it possible to get the same results through a total negative connotation (rejection)? For example, we might claim that both the symptoms of the identified patient and the symptomatic behavior of other family members are “wrong” because they serve to maintain the stability of a “wrong” system—“wrong” because it produces pain and suffering. By saying this, we would mean that the “wrong” system must change. At this point it should be remembered that any living system has three fundamental properties: 1) totality (that is, the system is more or less independent of the elements that form it); 2) autocorrection (and, therefore, a tendency towards homeostasis); 3) ability to transform.

By implying with a negative assessment that the system must change, we reject this system in its homeostaticity. Thus, we exclude the possibility of us being accepted by a dysfunctional system that Always homeostatic. In addition, we make the theoretical error of arbitrarily classifying the homeostatic tendency as “bad” and the transformative tendency as “good,” as if these two equally functional characteristics of the system were polar opposites.

In a living system, neither the homeostatic tendency nor the ability to transform can be considered a good or bad quality: both are functional characteristics of the system, and one cannot exist without the other. They relate to each other according to the circular model, that is, according to the continuum principle: in the circular model, the linear “either-or” is replaced by “more or less.”

However, as Shands points out, man strives tirelessly to achieve a utopian state of relational immutability, the “ideal” goal of reconstructing his inner universe as completely independent of empirical evidence:

“This process can be considered as a movement towards complete independence from the here-and-now, - towards liberation from the urgent physiological needs of the moment. Both scientists and philosophers are in search of eternal truths abstracted from the gross biological event. The paradox is that such a state is actually incompatible with life for the simple reason that life is a constant movement, constant increase entropy, and the system, in order to survive, must be supported by a continuous influx of negative entropy (“negentropy” in the sense of both energy and information). Thus, we are faced with the eternal paradox of the search for stability and balance despite the fact that it is easy to show: stability and balance are achievable only in inorganic systems, and even there only to a limited extent. Equilibrium is incompatible with life or learning: forward movement, however minimal, is a necessary requirement for any biological system.” ;

A family in crisis who seeks therapy is also passionately involved in the pursuit of this “ideal goal”; it would not have come to us at all if it had not been afraid of a threat to its balance and stability (protected and maintained in defiance of empirical factors). A family that Not feels this threat, it is much more difficult to motivate him for therapy.

Family members can neither reject nor disqualify the context of such communication, since it corresponds to the dominant tendency of the system - homeostatic.

It is precisely because the positive connotation is one of approval rather than condemnation that it allows therapists to avoid rejection by the system. Moreover, it is possible that it allows the family to experience the experience of receiving open approval for the first time.

But at the same time, on a hidden level, the positive connotation confronts the family with a paradox: why like this a good thing, as group cohesion, requires the presence of a “patient”?

The function of defining relationships is related to the function of marking context: a clear definition of relationships, as described above, is a marker of therapeutic context.

To summarize, we can say that a positive connotation gives us the opportunity

1) unite all family members on the basis of complementarity in relation to the system, without giving them any form of moralistic assessments and thereby avoiding any divisions among group members;

2) enter into an alliance with the system due to confirmation of its homeostatic tendency;

3) to be accepted by the system as its full members, since we are motivated by the same intention;

4) confirming the homeostatic tendency, it is paradoxical to activate the ability to transform, since the positive connotation confronts the family with the paradox of why a “patient” is needed for group cohesion, described by therapists as such a good and desirable quality;

5) clearly define the relationship between the family and the therapist;

6) mark the context as therapeutic.

However, it cannot be said that the practical implementation of the principle of positive connotation is completely free of difficulties. It happens that the therapist, who is sincerely convinced that he is giving a positive connotation to all family members, in fact, without realizing it, makes an arbitrary dichotomization.

We had a similar experience with a three-generation family where the identified patient was a six-year-old boy diagnosed with severe autism. In addition to the boy and his parents, his maternal grandparents were invited to the third session.

From the material received at the session, we assumed the existence of an intense possessive attachment of the grandmother to her daughter, who went towards this attachment by finding different ways need financial assistance. At the end of the session, we expressed our daughter’s admiration for the sensitivity and kindness she always showed towards her mother. It was a mistake, as we immediately realized by the mother’s exclamation: “So I’m selfish!” Her indignation revealed a secret rivalry between mother and daughter over which of them was more generous. This mistake aroused the grandmother's hostility and jeopardized the continuation of therapy.

In other cases, the family perceived as a negative connotation what we gave as a positive connotation. The following example illustrates this.

The family consisted of three people: father, Mario; mother, Martha; seven-year-old Lionel, referred to us with a diagnosis of childhood autism. Given the family's close ties to the extended family (as is typical of most families with psychotic children), we invited the maternal grandparents to the fifth session. In this session we were able to observe a striking repetition.

Grandparents as a couple were extremely symmetrical in their struggle all their lives. Their enmity divided the family into two parts: Martha was taken to his side by her father, a powerful and suppressive man, and her younger brother Nikola, now over thirty and married, was always preferred and overprotected by his mother, a soft and seductive woman.

During the previous sessions it became clear that Martha, while “already having” her father's love, passionately longed for her mother's love - that is, that pseudo-privileged relationship that was always directed towards her brother. She herself spoke of her jealousy of her brother, which was shared by her husband Mario. Mario, usually impassive and inert, became animated only by protesting against his selfish and childish brother-in-law, who, among other things, did not deserve the generous love showered on him by his mother. The repetition that struck us in this session was the statement, repeated again and again by grandmother, that she was very inclined to love those who were not loved. She loved and still “loves her son Nikola just because that her husband never loved him, but gave all his love to Martha. Now she feels obligated to love Nicola's wife (poor thing, she's an orphan), and she really loves Lionel, her psychotic grandson, primarily because she feels Martha never really accepted him. From the very moment he was born, she noticed (and then her voice trembled with deep feelings) that he was treated “like a calf.”

During the session it became clear that this “sweet” grandmother always had and still has a moral imperative to “love the unloved” (obviously a symmetrical impulse). At the end of the session, the therapists warmly thanked the grandparents for their kind cooperation and dismissed the family without any special comments.

Only Lionel and his parents were invited to the next session. Taking into account the material received in the previous session, we began by praising Lionel for his great sensitivity. He realized that grandmother, with her generous heart, needed to love those who were not loved. Since Uncle Nikola got married six years ago, has since been loved by his wife and no longer needs the love of his mother, the poor grandmother has no one to love. Lionel understood perfectly the situation and the need to give his grandmother someone unloved whom she could love. And from a very young age he began to do everything to be unloved. This made his mother more and more nervous, more and more angry with him, while his grandmother, on the other hand, could remain endlessly patient with him. Only she truly loved “poor little Lionel.”

At this point in the session, Lionel started making a hell of a noise by banging two ashtrays together.

Martha's reaction was sudden and dramatic: she perceived our appeal to Lionel as a sudden revelation of the truth. She complemented us by saying that she was simply happy when her mother criticized her for rejecting Lionel. “It's true, it's true! - she sobbed, - I felt happy when my mother said that I treated him like a calf. But what should I do now? [wringing hands] I sacrificed my son to my mother! How can I atone for this terrible mistake? I want to save my son... my poor child!”

We were immediately afraid that we had made a mistake. After all, Martha not only disqualified our definition of Lionel's sacrifice as voluntary, redefining it as yours sacrifice - she also felt that the therapists had identified her as a “guilty” mother who had sacrificed her child to her mother. This put Lionel back into his victim position, and his father, as usual, seemed to find it more convenient to remain silent, remaining an observer of something that did not truly move him.

At this point the session was interrupted and the team of therapists discussed the situation; as a result, we decided to involve the father and return him to the position of an active member of the system. Returning to the family, we gently noticed that Mario, unlike Martha, showed no reaction to our comments.

Therapist:“Our preliminary hypothesis is that you have very good reasons for accepting this voluntary sacrifice of Lionel.”

Martha (shouting): “ His mother! His mother! With her, Lello [Lionel] is even worse! She must convince herself that Mario is unhappy with me! That I'm a bad mother! My mother always tells me that I am impatient with Lello, but she [my mother-in-law] tells me that I am not strict enough! And I start to get nervous and scream at Lello! And my husband is simply present at the same time. He never protects me... look at him!”

Therapist:“Let's think about all this before the next session. A. Now let's make it clear that Lionel is no one's victim. [turning to the child] Isn't that right, Lello? You yourself I came up with this idea - to become so crazy as to help everyone. Nobody asked you to do this, [turning to parents] See? He doesn't say anything, he doesn't cry. He decided to continue to act in the same way as until now, because he is confident that he is doing the right thing.”

As we have already said, at first Martha’s reaction seemed to us that we had made a mistake. Agreeing with our comment, she made it clear that she took it as a declaration that she was guilty: a bad mother who sacrificed her son for the sake of her unresolved relationship with her mother. The lack of response from the father made us suspect that he, too, interpreted our intervention in a similar way: “Since my wife is responsible for Lionel’s psychosis, I am good, innocent and therefore superior to everyone else.”

However, a further turn of the session showed us that our connotation of Lionel's behavior turned out to be not a mistake at all, but, on the contrary, a precisely directed move that revealed the focus of the problem. Martha could not accept the idea that her son was not at all Not“sacrificial lamb”, but an active member of the family system and, moreover, is in a leadership position. By disqualifying Lionel's active position, returning him to the position of an object of influence, a passive victim, Martha clearly acted to preserve the status quo of the system. She tried to regain her lost position of pseudo-power by declaring herself “guilty” and thereby reason son's psychosis.

Her reaction was convenient for Mario, whose position of superiority in the system was that he took the place of having the opposite qualities, that is, being seen as “good” and “tolerant.” In order to maintain their latent rivalry and continue the family game, it was necessary to return the child to his position as a victim. At this point, there was only one thing we could do: put Mario in the same position that Martha was in, stating that he, too, had deep reasons for accepting Lionel's willing sacrifice. At the same time, we placed Lionel in a position of superiority as the spontaneous interpreter of the family's perceived needs. This paved the way for us for Lionel's paradoxical prescription of psychotic leadership.

Notes

It is important to clarify here that the positive connotation is metacommunication (in fact, the therapist's implicit message about communication between all family members) and thus refers to more high level abstractions. Russell's theory of logical types postulates the principle that something that includes all the elements of a set cannot be an element of the set. By giving a positive meta-message, that is, by reporting approval of the behavior of all members of the set, we thereby make a meta-message about the entire set and, therefore, rise to the next level of abstraction. (Whitehead and Russell, 1910-1913).

Here we should note that the non-verbal aspect of our positive connotation is completely consistent with the verbal: no signs of roteness, irony or sarcasm. We are capable of this when we are completely convinced of the need to join the homeostatic tendency of the family, such as it is “here and now”.

And therefore, its interpretation often poses difficulties. However, connotations are found not only in literature, but also in everyday speech. About what this is a connotation in simple words, will be discussed in the article.

Dictionary definition

The dictionary says the following about what connotation is. This is the name given to a stable association that arises in a person’s mind in connection with the use of a word or expression with a certain meaning.

Example of use: In one of the books of the Soviet and Russian philologist, philosopher and culturologist S. S. Averintsev it is said that such a phenomenon as laughter, in different cultures colored differently, just like the word “laughter” itself, which acquires different connotations in dissimilar languages.

Origin of the word

When understanding the question of what connotation is, it is worth considering the etymology of this concept. The word comes from the Latin preposition con - “together” and the verb noto - “I designate, mark.” From their addition we first got the verb connoto, meaning “I have” additional meaning“, and from it in Late Latin a noun was formed - connotatio, which is understood as “the accompanying meaning of a unit of language.”

Functions

For better understanding In order to understand what connotation is, it would be appropriate to consider its purpose.

Connotation includes additional functions - semantic or stylistic - that are strongly associated in the minds of native speakers. Semantic - those that are associated with meaning, meaning, and stylistic - with expressive linguistic means.

The concept being studied serves to express various shades statements - emotional or evaluative. It is also a reflection of the cultural traditions of society.

Connotation is one of the types of pragmatic information, that is, useful information suitable for solving practical problems. It does not directly reflect the phenomena and objects themselves, but only a certain attitude towards them.

Using the example of "fox"

Sometimes connotation is also called semantic, that is, semantic association. With its help, they reflect one of the features of the designated object that is stably associated in the minds of native speakers with this object. But at the same time, this attribute is not necessary for the use of this word.

Thus, in many European languages, the word used to denote a fox has the connotation of “cunning” or “cunning.” These characters are not essential for this species of mammal. When faced with a fox, you will recognize it by its red fur, long fluffy tail, and sharp muzzle. But you won’t check how cunning an animal is to find out its species. However, in the language both of these lexemes are strongly associated with each other. This is evidenced, for example, by the fact that a cunning person is often called a fox.

As stated above, connotations are a reflection of the assessment of the surrounding reality accepted in a given linguistic community. They also reflect cultural traditions. In accordance with this, deceit and cunning are constant characteristics of the fox, depicted as a character in fairy tales about animals found in the folklore of many nations.

How to recognize connotation?

Being a type of pragmatic information associated with a word and expressing an attitude towards the surrounding world, but not literally reflecting it, connotations differ from other types similar information. What is this difference? It lies in the fact that this view and attitude belong to the person pronouncing them, not as an individual, but as a representative of a linguistic community.

For example, a word such as “nag” carries pragmatic information containing an emotional-evaluative imprint. It indicates the speaker's attitude towards the object. By calling a horse a nag, a person expresses his own opinion regarding the quality of the animal. Therefore, there is no connotation here.

In contrast, when using a lexeme containing connotation, a personal point of view on the designated object is not expressed. By calling a fox a fox, a person does not evaluate the animal in any way. However, the connection between the fox and such a quality as cunning is present in the mind of the speaker.

Other examples of connotation

Example 1. When the sister entered her brother’s room, she was indignant: “How can you live in such a stable!” The word "shed" means "pen for livestock." Its connotation is “an uncleaned, dirty room.”

Example 2. “I love my little sun so much!” the mother was touched, admiring her cute little one. In this case, when the word “sun” is used, we mean, of course, not an astronomical object, but a person who emits light and heat.

Example 3. Oleg really hoped for a satisfactory grade for coursework, although I understood that there was a lot of water in it. The word “water” has many connotations, one of them is “excessive information that does not carry a semantic load.”

Example 4. “I didn’t expect that such a self-confident guy would turn out to be an ass,” Sergei complained to his new acquaintance. The word “donkey” is strongly associated with such qualities as stupidity and stubbornness.

Example 5. Andrei told his comrades that he worked like a donkey for almost six months, and in the end he was left practically without a penny. In contrast to “donkey,” the connotations of such a lexeme as “donkey” are endurance, high performance, and patience.

Having considered the semantic and stylistic connotations, it is necessary to say something about terms that are close in meaning to it.

Denotation and pejorative

The word “denotation” comes from the Late Latin participle denotatio, which is formed from the Latin adverb de - “separately” and the verb noto - “designate, mark” and is translated as “designated”. This is the direct, obvious meaning of the word, its literal meaning, its lexical meaning. Denotation is the opposite of connotation. The latter arise from the former. As a rule, this occurs by highlighting or enhancing some a separate feature.

An example is the word "feather". It was originally used to refer to a writing instrument and later took on a new connotation and is now associated with writing people And literary creativity. For example, there is an expression “feather shark”.

Pejorative, otherwise called pejorative vocabulary, comes from the Latin verb pējōrāre - “to worsen.” These are words and phrases that express negative rating, disapproval, censure of something or someone, contempt or irony. In essence, pejorative is a negative connotation. It should be noted that such words are not curse words. For example, the word “rag,” which was originally interpreted as “a piece of cloth,” later acquired the connotation of “a spineless, weak person.” Other examples of pejorative are “clown”, “rhyme-maker”, “crammed”, “hooker”.

The connotation of a word reflects such a feature of the object it denotes, which, although it does not constitute a necessary condition for the use of this word, is stably associated with the designated object in the minds of native speakers. For example, in many European languages, the word for fox has the connotation of “cunning” or “cunning.” It is clear that these characteristics are unimportant for this class of animals: in order to call some animal a fox, we do not need to check whether it is cunning. Consequently, the sign of cunning is not included in the definition (interpretation) of this word, but nevertheless is stably associated with it in the language, as evidenced by at least the figurative use of the word fox(a) in relation to a cunning person. Connotations embody the assessment of the object or fact of reality that is accepted in a given language community and enshrined in the culture of a given society and reflect cultural traditions. Thus, cunning and deceit are constant characteristics of the fox as a character in fairy tales about animals in the folklore of many peoples.

The connotation of the lexical-semantic variant is emotional (for example, interjections), evaluative (positive/negative), expressive (there is figurative and magnifying), stylistic.

Stylistic connotation involves the use of a word in a certain functional style. Adjacent to it is cultural connotation - an element included in the culture of the word, determined by the national culture and carrying for its speakers of this language some information related to the culture of his people. Connotations can be constant (inherent) or contextual (occasional). Words that have an inherent connotation are marked. Marking according to the stylistic principle divides vocabulary into colloquial, with a neutral stylistic coloring, and literary-bookish (for example, mummy-mother-female parent; kid-child-infant). Most colloquial words began to be used as separate lexical-semantic variants 1) due to the transfer of meaning by contiguity (cinema–>movies–>pictures) 2) with the help of endearing suffixes (dad-daddy, loony, shorty). Colloquial vocabulary is usually divided into general literary vocabulary and phraseology and non-literary vocabulary and phraseology.

Question 42. The nature of metaphor, its role in language and text

Metaphor is the transfer of a name to objects of another kind or type based on the similarity of secondary characteristics (color, shape, size, internal qualities, etc.).

There are four components involved in the formation and analysis of metaphor. These are the main and auxiliary subjects of metaphor, to which paired terms are applied (literal frame and metaphorical focus, theme and “container”, referent and correlate) and correlative properties of each object or class of objects. These components are not fully represented in the structure of the metaphor; in particular, the properties of the main subject remain undesignated

metaphors that make up its semantics. As a result, the metaphor allows for different interpretations. The meaning of a metaphor is formed by the characteristics of the named class of objects (or their analogues), compatible with the subject of the metaphor.

The image contained in a linguistic metaphor usually does not acquire a semiotic function, i.e. cannot become a signifier of some meaning. This distinguishes a metaphor from a symbol (in the narrow sense). In a metaphor, the meaning is stable. It is directly associated with the word as its signifier. In a symbol there is a stable image that performs the function of a signifier. It can not only be named, but also depicted. The meaning of the symbol does not have clear contours. Metaphor is united with a symbol and distinguished from signs and signals by the absence of a regulatory function, and, consequently, of direct addressing.

Metaphor is not only a figurative (poetic) resource

speech, but also a source of new meanings of words that are capable of performing a characterizing and nominative function, assigned to the individual as his names. In this case, metaphorization leads to the replacement of one meaning with another.

Metaphor reflects many aspects and therefore it is the subject of study in a number of branches of knowledge and sections of linguistics. How certain type Tropes metaphor is studied in poetics (stylistics, rhetoric, aesthetics). As a source of new meanings of words, metaphor is studied in lexicology, as special kind speech use - in pragmatics, as an associative mechanism and object of interpretation and perception of speech - in psycholinguistics and psychology. Metaphor is studied as a way of thinking and understanding reality in logic, philosophy, and cognitive psychology. Metaphor has been most fully studied in lexicology. Both main types of meaningful words - names of objects and designations of features - are capable of metaphorizing meaning. Among the names, these are, first of all, concrete nouns - names of natural genders, realities and their parts, as well as names of relational meaning, creating metaphorical periphrases (“darling of fate”, “pet of battle”). Among the characteristic words are adjectives denoting physical qualities (“prickly answer”), descriptive verbs (“conscience gnaws”). Sometimes a metaphor is generated by an analogy between entire situations (“Don’t throw words to the wind”).

To clarify the nature of a metaphor, it is important to determine its syntactic properties. A sentence with a metaphorical predicate is syntactically similar to an identity statement in the following features: it expresses a factual judgment, indicates an ungraded attribute, gives a constant characteristic of an object, and does not allow syntactic extension by attribute words indicating a measure of similarity. It differs from identity clauses by the following signs: the truth of a metaphorically expressed judgment cannot always be logically established, a predicate (figurative) metaphor cannot be coreferent to its subject, a metaphorical sentence is asymmetrical. These properties bring metaphorical sentences closer to statements of similarity and resemblance.

Today we’ll talk about the word “connotation”, what it is and why it is needed.

As a rule, any word in a certain context carries, in addition to its main meaning, an additional meaning, subtext. In linguistics, such additional content of words is called connotations. At the same time, different people the same words can evoke connotations that are opposite in assessment. For example, the word “dacha” will evoke positive connotations for some: “recreation in nature,” while for others it will evoke negative connotations: “slave labor in the heat.”

The term is composed of Latin from lat. con (con) - together and noto - mark, designate. Connotatio, from connoto - I have an additional meaning) - emotional, evaluative or stylistic coloring, highlighting a separate meaning.

It was originally used in logic along with “denotation”, the basic definition of a word, and later came to be used in philology and psycholinguistics.

If you like to delve deeper into meanings, then let's look at an extended article with more complex terminology.

CONNOTATION,the type of lexical information accompanying the meaning of a word. Sometimes also called (semantic) association. The connotation of a word reflects such a feature of the object it denotes, which, although it does not constitute a necessary condition for the use of this word, is stably associated with the designated object in the minds of native speakers.

For example, in many European languages ​​the word for fox has the connotation‘cunning’ or ‘cunning’ . It is clear that these signs are unimportant for this class of animals: in order to name some animal fox, we don't need to check whether it is tricky. Consequently, the sign of cunning is not included in the definition (interpretation) of this word, but nevertheless is stably associated with it in the language, as evidenced by at least the figurative use of the word fox ( A) in relation to a cunning person. Connotations embody the assessment of the object or fact of reality that is accepted in a given language community and enshrined in the culture of a given society and reflect cultural traditions. Thus, cunning and deceit are constant characteristics of the fox as a character in fairy tales about animals in the folklore of many peoples.

Connotations are a type of so-called pragmatic information associated with a word, since they reflect not the objects and phenomena of the real world themselves, but an attitude towards them, a certain view of them. Unlike other types of pragmatic information, this attitude and view belongs to the speaker not as an individual, but as a representative of the linguistic community. So, for example, the word nag carries emotional-evaluative pragmatic information about the attitude of the speaker as a person to the object denoted by this word, and when using this word in relation to a certain horse, we inevitably express our own disapproving attitude towards it. In contrast, the speaker, using a lexeme that has a certain connotation, does not thereby express his personal point of view on the designated object; for example, using the word fox to designate an animal, we do not thereby express our opinion about the fox’s cunning. Nevertheless, the connection between the fox and cunning is present in the consciousness of the speaker - in that area of ​​his that in social psychology is called the collective unconscious.

Other examples of connotations are signs‘stubbornness’ and ‘stupidity’ at the word donkey, ‘ monotony ‘ at the word to nag, ‘speed’ and ‘impermanence’ at the word wind . The connotations of words reveal themselves in a number of phenomena belonging to language or speech. To the linguistic manifestations of connotations, i.e. those that are fixed in the language system include figurative meanings (cf. meaning‘dumb and/ or stubborn person‘ at the word donkey), usual comparisons (cf. mulish), meanings of derived words (cf. windy in meaning‘frivolous’), meanings of phraseological units (cf. like the wind blew away, which means the rapid disappearance of someone/ something).

The objective manifestations of the connotations of a word include speech phenomena that are usually not recorded in dictionaries and grammars, but are reproduced with sufficient regularity in the process of generating and interpreting a statement with a givenin a word. One of these phenomena – this is the relative uniformity in the interpretation by native speakers of the so-called pseudo-tautological constructions having the form X is X, For example A German is a German . From a logical point of view, such statements are tautological (true by virtue of their form), and therefore should be avoided in speech as uninformative: their predicate does not carry anything new in comparison with what is already expressed with the help of the subject. However, this does not happen - they are perceived as completely normal utterances, which are informative precisely due to the fact that in them the object X is implicitly assigned a property that is stably associated in the minds of speakers with objects of this type. In particular, the fact that the majority of Russian speakers interpret the above example of pseudo-tautology as approximately the following meaning: “What do you want from a German, they are all so neat (or pedantic)”, shows that a German withproperties such as‘neatness’ and ‘pedantry’ , which turn out to be stably associated in the minds of Russian speakers with the word German , certainly, without referring to the essential characteristics of the class of persons denoted by this word.

Speech manifestations of the connotations of a word also include restrictions on the compatibility of this word with words expressing its connotations, within the framework of specific constructions that can be considered diagnostic in this regard. So , correct usage designs kind He X, but he's Y, as shown in a number of works on the semantics of conjunction But , implies that the speaker has the opinion thatnormally there is no X Y -ovy (= does not have the property of Y-ness). Since the connotation of the word X- this is the feature that is stably associated with the object X denoted by this word, it should be expected that by substituting Y in this construction the name of the connotative feature of the object X, we will get a strange, anomalous statement - it is enough to compare, for example, the strangeness of statements ? He is a bachelor, but he is unpretentious in everyday life/ unkempt / carelesswith absolute naturalness He is a bachelor, but he is very homely / well-groomed / a very thorough and serious person.

The connotations of words are specific to each language. L.V. Shcherba noted the following difference between the Russian word water and the French word denoting the same substance eau: French eau, unlike Russian water, is not typical for figurative use in the sense‘ something without content‘ , but the French word has a meaning that can more or less be conveyed to the Russians decoction (eau de rice'rice water', literally 'rice water', eau d'orge‘barley broth’ ), and from this it follows that the Russian concept of water emphasizes its nutritional uselessness, while the French eauthis sign is completely alien. And there are a great many such examples. Yes, word elephant in Russian has the connotation‘heaviness’, ‘clumsiness’ ( Wed stomp like an elephant ; like a bull in a china shop ) , and in Sanskrit its translated equivalent gadja– connotation of ‘lightness’, ‘gracefulness’ (cf. gadjagamini’ with a light gait’, literally ‘elephant’).

In the same language, words that are similar in meaning can also have very different connotations - this is well demonstrated by the example of the difference in the connotations of a word belonging to the Russian specialist in lexical semantics Yu.D. Apresyan donkey(‘stubbornness’, ‘stupidity’ ) from the connotations of the word ass (‘ willingness to work hard and without complaint‘ ).

LITERATURE Apresyan Yu.D. Connotations as part of the pragmatics of words. – In the book: Yu.D. Apresyan. Selected works, vol. 2. Integral description of language and system lexicography. M., 1995