Semantics in Theory and Practice

The literature of pragmatics, discourse analysis and semantics reveals that several studies attempt the explanation of “meaning” within and beyond the physical properties of language. If there is any reason why language is worthy of such scholarly attention, it is because it is very meaningful to its users; language is systematic, broad and analytic. The works of early language phylosophers and grammarians are the bedrocks of the study of “meaning”. As a means of human communication, language is meaning-laden. Theoretical perspectives in semantics, are instrumental in the systematic and expository presentation of the features and properties of “meaning”, and the literature of semantics corroborates this claim. Semantics is a meaning-elucidating field of language study. Language use is not arbitrary; writers and speakers deploy their knowledge of semantic universals to engage in effective communication. This paper examines issues in semantics with a view to providing rich insights on the nature of “meaning” in language. The paper concludes that “meaning” is contextual, sentence-tructure-driven, literal, non-literal, reference-making, truth-conditional, speaker-based and language-specific.