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21. Characterize briefly two chosen methods of describing meaning.

- Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences. In semantic analysis, there is always an attempt to focus on what the words conventionally mean

rather than on what a speaker might want the words to mean on a particular occasion

This technical approach to meaning emphasizes the objective and the general. It avoids the subjective and the local

Linguistic semantics deal with the conventional meaning conveyed by the use of words and sentences of a language.

The two main areas are logical semantics, concerned with matters such as sense and reference and presupposition and implication, and lexical semantics, concerned with the analysis of word meanings and relations between them

- Pragmatics studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning

Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behaviour in philosophy, sociology, linguistics and anthropology

Unlike semantics, which examines meaning that is conventional or "coded" in a given language

pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on structural and linguistic knowledge (e.g. grammar, lexicon, etc.) of the speaker and listener,

but also on the context of the utterance, any pre-existing knowledge about those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other factors

In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, time etc. of an utterance.