Dynamic

Found in actual use

Connotative

Meanings deriving from context

Creative

Negotiated between users

Extended meaning

Unpredictable

Impersonal/ generalised

Personal/ particular

(The classification of types of meaning was suggested by Alan Maley while giving a lecture at Moscow State University in February 1991)

Static and dynamic meanings are discussed in the Russian tradition in terms of the distinction between meaning ('значение') and use ('употребление') particularly with reference to specific, context-bound, loftier or even exotic ways of transforming the word's basic primary meaning which serves as the initially static point of departure.

'Use' in a more general sense is not identified in D. Crystal's "Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics" as a separate linguistic term. To refer to 'performed' (occasional) or 'dynamic' uses the terms contextual/ functional/ situational/ interpersonal meanings are used.

Where meaning and use intersect comes the actual understanding of the word's semantic potential since 'meaning' is never fixed: we speak of 'meaning' radiating out, as it were (Quirk, 1990, p. 136).

A broader view of dynamic meaning involves including as part of one's study the whole of a particular collocational (or verbal) environment which provides a context for a lexical item to be used in speech. According to M. Hoey "this environment determines the 'instational meaning', or text meaning, of the item, a meaning which is unique to each specific instance" (Hoey, 1991, p. 8).

Meaning and usage

To define meaning is especially difficult due to the complexity of the process by which language and human consciousness serve to reflect outward reality and to adopt it to human needs.

Meaning as a linguistic notion

There are three main categories of definitions of meaning which may be referred to as:

· referential or analytical definitions of meaning

· functional or contextual definitions of meaning

· operational or information-oriented definitions of meaning