Page 1 of 12
Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 9
Publication Date: September 25, 2022
DOI:10.14738/assrj.99.13057. Liele Madzou, D. A. (2022). Expressions and Meanings: A Phenomenological Approach to Semantics. Advances in Social Sciences
Research Journal, 9(9). 131-142.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Expressions and Meanings: A Phenomenological Approach to
Semantics
Desmond Auffrey LIELE MADZOU
Laboratory for Multidisciplinary Studies and
Research in Human Sciences and the Environment (LERPSHE)
Marien Ngouabi University
ABSTRACT
This article aims to analyze the relationship between ''saying'' and the ''meaning of
saying'' under the banner of phenomenology. It is a question of resolving the conflict
between the enunciation as the communicative background of an axiom and the
content of knowledge as the intention of a thing. This is the problem of language and
of the ontological description of the expressed object. This research tends to put
back on the table of philosophy the claim of formal logic to want, wrongly, to claim
to define the fundamental meanings by semantics. This research aims to posit
saying as an expression referring to something. It reveals the uniqueness that
naturally exists between saying and meaning in the noema-noesis relationship.
Aware that all of life is language, this article sets out to establish the distinction
between modes of reasoning and forms of reasoning in order to account for
meanings as the meaning of saying. By scrutinizing the notion of judgment, it follows
that significations as expressed meaning are phenomena.
Keywords: Expression; formal logic, phenomenology, meaning, meaning, semantics.
INTRODUCTION
The world is experiencing an uninterrupted evolution in the field of communication. This
evolution inaugurates the digital era where we are witnessing the development of several
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) processes. Communication as the art of
transmitting a message is a process of language, as a system of signs. The question of language
is of paramount importance here. The whole issue revolves around understanding and being
understood. This is the problem of meaning or signification with which the human is however
confronted. Clarifying the relationship between expressions and meanings becomes a
necessity. Such a problem can only be envisaged on a philosophical ground where the notion of
signification lends itself to several interpretations; on the one hand, the philosophy of language
and on the other, phenomenology as the science of what appears with its meaning
(phenomenon). It is in this philosophical dialogue that one can perceive the meaning stripped
of all misinterpretation.
Historically, the question of signification as the meaning of saying goes back to Parmenides 1and
will be more explicit with Aristotle. The latter deploys his understanding of the meaning of
1
Cf. The question of being and non-being as presented by Parmenides in Fragment VI: “ To say and to think being
because there is being. »
Page 2 of 12
132
Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 9, Issue 9, September-2022
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
propositions in Categories 2where the meaning of the expression is a logical proposition, of type
true or false from the point of view of form. Meaning would result, under these conditions, from
the relation of the subject to the predicate; coherence is here the criterion for justifying the
meaning of propositions.
In contemporary times, the debate is enriched by the philosophers of language, more precisely
the Viennese Circle 3for whom the meaning in a general way would refer to the form of the
axiom to be true or false and that the expression as a sentence has in it’s formulating a meaning.
However, this position, although common for the tenors of logical empiricism, will not be
unanimous4.
In Principles of Mathematics, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) presents three dimensions of the
notion of meaning. First, signification as immediate reference to the thing. Here, signification is
an ontological notion. It is, therefore, around the notion of meaning that its apprehension is
articulated. Then the meaning will be logical in terms of denotation as a linguistic constructive
expression referring indirectly to logical objects. Finally, meaning is understood through the
notion of sense in its signifying modality. Here, we are in the syntactic dimension of meaning.
This internal multi-interpretation of the Vienna Circle denotes the urgency of clarifying the
notion of meaning.
To pose expressions and meanings, for us, implies to pose the saying, as an assembly of words
expressed, that is to say, brought outside in order to be understood, regardless of the mode of
expression5. It is about unveiling the meaning of the ideas expressed, which will therefore be
subject to judgment in order to bring out the expected meaning: this is the objective of this
research.
The problem that this article tends to solve is that of questioning the validity of the discourse,
which will induce the problem of veracity. This is probably the problem of language and the
ontological description of the expressed object. In other words, of the relationship between
saying and the meaning of saying.
Our problematic consists in showing that the notion of signification springs from the
resolution of the conflict between the enunciation as the communicative background of an
axiom and the content of knowledge as the intention of a thing. The answer to the following
questions makes it possible to elucidate this approach: is the axiomatic enough to pretend to
2
ARISTOTLE 1977, Organon , Paris, Vrin. 3
Vienna Circle: Moritz Schlick, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, George Edward Moore, David Hilbert, Henri
Poincaré, Karl Popper, Gottlob Frege...
4
According to Jean Louis VAXELAIRE, “ A new terminological problem arises when approaching the shores of logic:
if Mill used grammatical proper names for his examples, the proper names of Frege and Russell are very different from
the classical definition. Thus, for Frege, the capital of the German empire or What increased by 2 gives 4 are proper
nouns since they designate a singular object. Russell's definition is of another order: logical proper names are limited to
this and that , the only terms which are simple symbols and irreducible to analysis. » Cf. Vaxelaire JL, 2008, Etymology,
significance and meaning, in World Congress of French Linguistics (CMLF), Paris, Institute of French Linguistics, p.
2189.
5
MORAND Bernard writes about the modes of expression that: “ All are not necessarily verbalized, and even less
written in the written sentence of the language. » Cf. MORAND Bernard, 1996, The senses of meaning. For an a priori
theory of the sign, in Intellectica , Vol., 2, no 25 , p. 232.
Page 3 of 12
133
Liele Madzou, D. A. (2022). Expressions and Meanings: A Phenomenological Approach to Semantics. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,
9(9). 131-142.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.99.13057
identify the content of the object? In order to express oneself, does meaning necessarily pass
through formal propositions? In other words, is every expression significant? Doesn't the
meaning emerge rather from the noetic-noematic relationship? In other words, how does the
judgment reveal the fundamental meanings?
The expected results correspond to the verification of the following hypotheses:
- Axiomatic would not suffice to define the meaning of saying;
- Meaning would result from the noetic-noematic relationship;
- The judgment would hint at the basic meanings
METHOD
To verify these hypotheses, we follow the method of phenomenological hermeneutics. We
analyze the concepts summoned in a noetic sphere where understanding is an experience of
consciousness. It is a dialogue of our consciousness in relation to the problem of the meaning
of discourse. The conclusions that flow from this research are an articulation between the
present of the reader's consciousness and the world of the texts summoned and their authors (C.
Boundja, 2019, p. 17). Which means that it is a phenomenological interpretation of the problem
raised in this research. To do this, it is a philosophical necessity to clearly elucidate the terms
expressions and meaning, to then join them in order to better understand the crux of the
formulation of this research.
- Phrases
An expression is a communication of ideas; it is the fact of expressing oneself through language,
therefore through a sign code. It is a manifestation of thought. Philosophically, the term
expression implies bringing outside a cognitive pressure, in terms of the desire to speak in order
to be understood. If it is established that the term expression has for root the verb to express,
expression would mean to take precedence outside as an assembly of words carrying a semantic
density. To express is thus an “exposure of a signified and of an original meaning”6. Expression,
as the action of representing, is the expression of a meaning.
- Meanings
The term signification, derived from the Latin significatio or the verb significare, evokes the idea
of the meaning attached to a thing. In linguistics, signification is the correlation between the
signifier and the signified, the object and its objectivity. The signifier is what signifies, what
expresses signification; it is the object that expresses a meaning. The signified, moreover, is
what a signifier represents, the concept. This is the meaning of a sign. French Rastier presents
this approach in these terms: " the sign results according to us from the process of interpretation,
because its signifier is not given to a simplex apprehensio , but identified only in a practice, and
its signified is not immanent to it: in short, a sign can only be identified as a moment in an
interpretative journey. ” 7Here is a fairly realistic position of what is called par signified.
However, this approach is not unanimous. Faced with these linguistic nuances, it is a successful
intelligence to approach the concept of meaning on a philosophical field in order to spare us
these grammatical turns and return to the concept as it appears to us.
6
BOUNDJA C., 2018, Thus spoke, Studies on the language of Nietzsche and African orality , Paris, Presses
Académiques Francophones, p. 3.
7
RASTIER F., 1996, Issues of sign and text, Intellectica , Vol., 2, no 23 , p. 31.