Download DENOTATION/CONNOTATION Göran Sonesson

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:
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