Meaning: From literalism to Contextualism

Abstract

The present study is devoted to deal with the two types of meaning: the literal meaning and the non-literal meaning. The literal meaning is the conventional meaning or the dictionary meaning of words and sentences independent from context(Recanati,2004: 79-80) . Concerning the contextual meaning or the non-literal meaning, it refers to the type of meaning that doesn't deal with the dictionary meaning, it accounts for the contextual factors which may be physical, linguistic or social. The interpretation of the sentence regardless of the context causes so many problems in conveying the exact intended speaker's meaning. The aim of this paper is to study the difference between the literal and non-literal meaning, How some words and sentences can be interpreted literally and others are interpreted in terms of context. As a result, there are some sentences that can be interpreted literally independent from context. Other sentences require a departure from its literal meaning.