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DENOTATION/CONNOTATION Göran Sonesson As used in semiotics and in neighbouring disciplines, the terms denotation and connotation really cover at least four main conceptual distinctions, some of which have several varieties: yet, ignoring a few marginal cases, all may be seen as different ways of carving up a particular semantic domain, made up of the two obligatory relata of the sign function, expression and content, and of a portion of the experimental world corresponding to the content, viz. the referent. Consistent with the views of Saussure and Hjelmslev, the content is here considered to be a mental, or more precisely, an intersubjective, entity, whereas the referent is taken to be something which may be encountered in the experimental world, that is, at least potentially, in direct perception. Given these preliminaries, the four different distinctions can be adequately derived, but unlike the terms, the resulting concepts do not exclude each other, and in fact are often confused in the literature. In the case of the logical distinction, the connotation is identical with the content, or with a particular feature analysis of the content, and the denotation is another name for the referent, or for the relation connecting the content to the referent or, in some conceptions, starting out directly from the expression. In what we shall henceforth call the stylistic distinction, denotation is considered to be a part of the content that is taken to be in one-to-one correspondence with the referent, and connotation is identified with what remains of the content when denotation is deducted; at the same time, however, connotation and denotation are ordinarily supposed to be different kinds of content, where the possible content categories are defined by psychological predicates. Moreover, in some versions of the distinction, the semantic domain subject to segmentation is extended on the side termed connotation, so as to include also the subjective mental content of the sender and/or receiver of the sign, without the latter being clearly distinguished from the marginal content domain of the sign. The semiotical distinction, so called because it is proper to semiotics, viz. to the Hjelmslev tradition, concerns a denotation which is a relation between the expression and the content, and a connotation which relates two signs (i.e. two units of expression and content) in a partic ular way. Finally, what Eco calls connotation, when he is not simply thinking about the stylistic notion, is really what is elsewhere termed a (contextual) implication, i.e. the distinction is this time concerned with the differing degrees of indirectness with which the content is given, denotation being merely the less indirect one. The logical distinction: In logic and philosophy, denotation means the same thing as extension, i.e. the object or class of objects subsumed by a concept, and connotation is another term for what is also termed intension or comprehension, i.e. the list of all properties characterising the concept, or only those properties conceived to be the necessary and sufficient criteria for ascribing some objet to the concept; and/or the properties permitting us to pick out the objects falling under the concept. Employing the latter terms, the Logic of Port Royal first (in 1662) introduced this distinction, whereas the usage involving the terms denotation and connotation probably derives from John Stuart Mill (cf. Garza Cuarón 1987; 57ff, 69ff). Intension and extension are sometimes identified with what Frege termed "Sinn" and "Bedeutung", which means that various intensions may correspond to a single extension: for instance, "the Morning Star" and "the Evening Star", "equilateral triangle" and "equiangular triangle", "the vanquisher of Austerlitz" and "the vanquished of Waterloo", etc., have the same extensions but different intensions. If the intension is taken to contain all properties common to the objects in the extension, then, as Kubczak (1975:73) rightly observes, all terms having the same extension will also have the same intension. For instance, both the Morning Star and the Evening Star could be described as "a particular star, which can be seen shortly before the rising and shortly before the setting of the sun". If this is indeed the content of both terms, it is difficult to explain the fact that, in many contexts, one of the terms cannot be exchanged for the other. Kubczak concludes that, in linguistic signs, intensions do not contain full information about the objects referred to. An alternative explanation was long ago suggested by Edmund Husserl, and spelled out in further detail by Aron Gurwitsch (1957: 145ff): according to this analysis, the conceptual noema, i.e. the intension, does in fact contain all elements found in the object, but each time organised into a particular thematic hierarchy. If this is so, then it might be argued that terms lacking substitutability in "opaque contexts" contain the same features, but differently arranged (Sonesson 1978). Thus, to use Humboldt’s classical example, quoted by Kubzcak (p140), the Elephant may be conceived of as "der zweimal Trinkende", "der Zweizahnige", or "der mit einer Hand Versehene", each time giving pre-eminence to one of the proper parts or attributes of the whole. The stylistic distinction The stylistic distinction also takes it origin in the Port Royal Logic, where connotation, in this sense, is termed "idées accessoires"; it was, however, the German grammarian Karl Otto Erdmann, who in 1900 distinguished between "Hauptbedeutung", "Nebensinn", and "Gefühlswert", and Urban, Firth, and Ogden & Richards, seem to be among those principally responsible for circulating these notions in the English-speaking world, translating the first term by "denotation", and conflating the latter two terms under the denomination "connotation" (cf. Garza Cuarón 1978: 62ff; Rössler 1979:1f). Erdmann apparently thought that the core meaning, which he believed to be conceptual in nature, could be distinguished from subsidiary meaning aspects, on one hand, and from emotional values and ambience, on the other, but as the distinction is nowadays stated, the latter two notions are amalgamated. According to this conception, a demarcated portion of the content domain corresponds point by point to an object in the perceptual world, such as it would appear in a completely "objective" account; whereas the other part, the residue, has no equivalent in the real-world object, but is added to the content by the sign and/or the sign user. The features of the first part are supposed to be cognitive or conceptual, thus permitting the identification of the real-world object; the features of the other part are said to be emotive, or emotional, and it is never made clear whether they are part of the intersubjective content of the sign, are contributed by the sign producer, or result form the reaction of the sign receiver. Moreover, the cognitive meaning is taken to be mo re important than the rest, perhaps because cognition is postulated to carry more importance than emotion. It is not obvious that all these properties must necessarily co-occur. For instance, the most important features of the meaning of such as word as "darling", and those which permit an identification, are emotional, in the sense that they describe the emotional relationship between the speaker and the object referred to, the emotion being codified as a part of the intersubjective content of the language sign (Cf. Sonesson 1978). Although this variety of the terminological distinction is thus the most difficult to uphold, it remains the most popular one, and is often confused with the other ones, even in semiotical texts (thus for instance by Barthes). Hjelmslev’s distinction. According to Hjelmslev (1943:101ff), connotation is a particular configuration of languages, opposed, in this respect, not only to denotation, but also to metalanguage. According to his definitions, a connotational language is a la nguage, i.e. a system of signs, the expression plane of which is another language, which means it is the inversion of a metalanguage, the content plane of which is another language. Contrary to both of the latter, denotational language is a language, none of whose planes form another language. Thus, denotation is a relation which serves to connect the expression and the content of a sign, whereas connotation and metalanguage both relate two separate signs, each with its own expression and content. Apart fro m the definitions, Hjelmslev also gives various examples of connotations, such as different styles, genres, dialects, national languages, voices, etc. As a particularly pregnant example, he suggests that, all the while that he is speaking Danish, denoting different contents, he goes on connoting the Danish language. In a parallel fashion, a person speaking in a foreign tongue will all the time be connoting "I am a foreigner". In many languages, the use of an /r/ produced with the tip of the tongue, or with the uvula, indicates, and thus connotes, different geographical origin. When analysing these and other examples, we will realise that it is in the choice of a particular expression to stand for a given content, chosen among a set of alternatives, or of a particular variant to realise the expression invariant, that the semiotic connotations reside (Cf. Sonesson 1989, 122ff, 179ff). Hjelmslev’s connotations have often been compared to some of those mentioned by Bloomfield, which depend on the social and geographical origin of the speaker, or are associated with improper or intensified versions of more normal signs (Cf. Rössler 1979:31, 39ff; Garza Cuarón 1978, 168ff, 180). There is certainly a similarity in the kind of contents invoked, but it should be noted that what is important to connotation, according to Hjelmslev himself, is not the particular contents, or kinds of contents, conveyed, but the formal relationships which they presuppose (p.105). The study of the "social and sacral" values usually conveyed by the languages of connotation are assigned by Hjelmslev (p.105) to the theory of "substance". This explains why Hjelmslev’s list form "un inventaire, approximatif et allusif", as Greimas (1970:96) observes, which means Greimas’ own essay would have to be a contribution to this theory of "substance". Even if some particular kinds of content are really associated with connotational language, there is certainly nothing in Hjelmslev’s text to suggest that these should have something to do with emotion, contrary to what has been taken for granted by those who identify Hjelmslev’s connotation with the stylistic one. Spang-Hansen (1954:61), himself a close collaborator of Hjelmslev, observes that neither do only emotive signs contain connotations, nor do all emotive signs contain them. Indeed, four-letter words certainly connote their being "four-letter words", but this effect is produced quite independently of the reactions of the auditory, and of the degree of emotion with which the words are used. As a close sc rutiny of the few pages in which Hjelmslev introduces the notion of connotation will show, the formal theory of connotation is much more complex than most commentators have realised. Thus it can be demonstrated, for instance, that Hjelmslev (1943: 103) distinguished connotations stemming from the form of denotational language, in which the units of connotation and denotation are identical, and those derived from its substance, where the matter serving as the vehicle of the two signs is differently segmented. As soon as we delve deeper into the text, we will also discover that Hjelmslev’s examples embody a theory which is narrower, if not simply different, from the one conveyed by his definitions, and we will encounter reasons to doubt that connotational language, interpreted in this way, can really be considered a mirror image of metalanguage, as ordinarily understood (Cf. Sonesson 1989,179ff). Eco’s distinction Although Umberto Eco (1976:111; 1984: 32) claims to take over his notion of connotation from Hjelmslev, he has turned it into something rather different. The first time he employs the term, Eco (1968: 98ff) produces are very heterogeneous list of phenomena, which would seem to include logical connotation, stylistic connotation, and much else, which he then describes as the sum total of cultural entities brought up before the receiver’s mind. In a later text, however, Eco (1976: 111) defines connotation as "a signification conveyed by a precedent signification", which would rather suggest something similar to what logicians call a contextual implication – the context being offered by some or other "meaning postulate" defined in a particular sign system. More recently, Eco (1984:33) himself observes that what he calls the second level of the connotational system is based on "inference". To illustrate his idea of connotation, Eco asks us to imagine a dike provided with an alarm system in which, for instance, the sign AB denotes danger, the sign AD insufficiency, etc. In the context of the dike, danger is known to result from the rise of the water above a determinate level, whereas insufficiency means that the water-level is too low. We are also acquainted with the fact that, in the first case, it will be necessary to let some portion of the water out, and that in the latter case, some amount of water must be allowed to enter the system. Eco would say that the sign AB denotes danger and connotes evacuation (and then no doubt also high water-level), and that the sign AD denotes insufficiency while connoting the entering of the water into the system (and low water-level). Given the stock of knowledge accessible to the guardian, all these facts could be said to imply each other, in the context of the dike. In spite of its multiple meaning layers, this case does not confirm Hjelmslev’s model, as Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1977: 81f) rightly observes, since it is only the content of denotation, not the whole sign, which is transformed into the expression of connotation. But there is really no reason at all to expect that Eco’s example should confirm Hjelmslev’s model, since, in spite of using the same term, they are concerned with different phenomena. Indeed, as a close reading of Hjelmslev’s text will show (Hjelmslev 1943:105; Sonesson 1989: 185f), Eco’s connotations would be "symbols" to Hjelmslev, and could, in some cases, be indirectly conveyed by connotational languages. No doubt, we could look upon Hjelmslevian connotation as a particular case of implication, viz. an implication resulting from the peculiar relation between the expression and content of a sign. It is, however, an implication involving signs, not mere content parts, and that is what is essential to Hjelmslev. Göran Sonesson Bibliography: Eco, Umberto, La struttura assente. Milan. Bo mpiani 1968. Eco, Umberto, A theory of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1976. Eco, Umberto, Semiotics and the philosophy of language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1984 Garza Cuarón, Beatriz, La connotación: problemas del significado. México D.F.: El Colegio de México 1978. Greimas, A.J. Du sens. Pairs: Seuil 1970. Gurwitsch, Aron, Théorie du champ de la conscience. Bruges: Desclée de Brouver 1957. English version: The Field of Consciousness. Pittsburgh. Duquesne Univesity Press 1964. Hjelmslev, Louis, Omkring sprogteoriens grundlæggelse. Copenhagen. Akademisk forlag 1943. Kebrat-Orecchioni, Catherine, La connotation. Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon 1977. Kubczak, Hartmut, Das Verhältnis von Intention und Extension. Tübingen: Narr 1975. Rössler, Gerda, Konnotationen – Untersuchungen zum Problem der Mit- und Nebenbedeutung. Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag 1979. Sonesson, Göran, Tecken och handling. Lund: Doxa 1978. Sonesson, Göran, Pictorial concepts. Inquiries into the semiotic heritage and its relevance for the analysis of the visual world. Lund: Lund University Press 1989. Spang-Hanssen, Henning, Recent theories on the nature of the language sign. Copenhagen: Nordisk Sprog- och Kulturforlag 1954.