DENOTATION (Objective) and Connotation
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 851 ▶ |
| Object type | Epistemology, ontology or semantics |
According to E.von GLASERSFELD: “… one can show that even the commonest words retain a margin of subjective meaning for each individual speaker. Linguists and philosophers of language usually subsume this margin under the term ”connotation“, and they claim to be able to separate the subjective component neatly from ”objective denotation“. From our point of view, this claim rests on the illusion that words refer to things in the real world. In our theory … words… refer to subjective experiences of the individual language user. The separation between denotation and connotation thus no longer involves objectivity but becomes a question of greater or lesser fit with the usage of other speakers.
- “The result of our investigations in this area is that the meanings of words and longer segments of language are never ”shared“ with others in the sense that they could be considered the same for all members of a language community . All one can say is that among proficient speakers of a language , meanings are at best compatible, that is, they function similarly in most situations .
- “This is an important difference from the artificial, technical communication systems . There, the code that bestows significance on the signals is established and distributed to the communicators before any communication takes place”. (E.von GLASERSFELD, 1996, p.493-4)
The telephone repertory of numbers and subscribers could be a good example.
This is also related to the non-semantic significance of SHANNON's Theory of communication , as specified by SHANNON himself (and generally forgotten).
See also
Objectivity, Ontological Skepticism or Agnosticism