Li Feng

Communication and Linguistics Studies. Vol. 6, No. 1, 2020, pp. 1-5.

Later Wittgenstein puts forward the slogan of “meaning is use”, that is, the meaning of a word is not determined by its reference but by its usage or its function. Its essence is to bring forward the connection between language and the language user’s activity (2)

Austin’s speech act theory emphasizes that “saying is doing”, as the speaker uses language to state facts, which is a kind of act of statement or description. (2)

Searle points out that the main feature of language communication is the intentionality of the subject (2)

Cooperation:

Grice proposes the conversational “cooperative principle”, emphasizing the speaker’s meaning in communication. He believes that to understand the speaker’s implicit meaning in utterance, people don’t rely on linguistic decoding, but on pragmatic inference. It can be seen that no matter what form of research on meaning, the speaker’s subjective intention is regarded as the decisive factor of meaning (2)

Comment: 感通 (intention)

Meaning is intention. The purpose of communicating a thought is to let the audience understand the communicator’s intention of transmitting the thought. (2)

Human-Centered:

Cognitive linguistics emphasizes the reflection of the subjective construal of human as a cognitive subject in language structure and meaning, and holds that human subjectivity has something in common with what psychologists call “anthropocentrism” or “egocentricity”. (2)

Human play a central role in the perception of time, space and the construction of language, and place ego at the center of the universe, using it as a reference to form perspective (2)

Connectivity:

People use language to connect with the world. That is to say, the production, development and operation of language are inseparable from human beings. Human is the first factor in language research. Language is human language and human is the essence of language (2)

A person’s utterance is always composed of other people’s utterance, and always seek others’ response [2] (4)

Ref [2]: Bakhtin, M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. M. Holquist (ed.). C. Emerson and M. Holquist (trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press.

Comment: “God said”: composed with creation and expects creation’s response (Gen 1 - 2)