Stylistic classification of the english vocabulary

a) Logical Meaning

Logical meaning is the exact and definite name of an object, phenomenon or idea. This meaning is also synony­mously called denotative, referential or direct meaning. Let's see the illustration of the logical meaning of the following words: "empty" - having nothing inside, containing nothing. E.g.: an empty box; "fate" - good or bad luck coming to a person; ' moon" - the body which moves round the earth once a month and shines at night by light reflecting from the sun. E.g.: Scientists have explo­red the surface of the moon.

Logical meaning may be primary and secondary (derivative). The above-given examples are primary logi­cal meanings. The secondary logical meaning or these words are the following: "empty" - not meaning anything; "feeling empty" (calloq) - hungry; words "empty of mea­ning" - meaningless words.

Some stylistic devices are built on the interplay of primary and secondary logical meanings.

All the meanings fixed by English and American dic­tionaries constitute the semantic structure of the word. The main and the major component of the semantic structure of the word is its lexical meaning. And meanings which are not registered in dictionaries but exist in our speech or written texts are called contextual meanings. They don't enter the semantic structure of the word and exist only in a text.

Let us compare meanings of the word "presence" in the following two sentences:

1. 
   The governer said that he would not allow the presence of federal troops on the soil of his state.
   
2. 
   ...the General has been faced with a prob­lem as old as France's presence in Algeria.
   

In the first sentence the word "presence" means "...the state of being present", whereas in the second sen­tence the meaning of the word expands into "occupation", i.e. the seizure and control of an area, especially foreign territory, by military forces. The first meaning is tne dictionary meaning of the word. The second meaning is a contextual one. It lives only in the given text and disap­pears if the context is altered. However there are definite reasons to assume when a number of derivative meanings are given place in dictionaries on the basis of contextual meanings. When the two meanings clearly co-exist in the utterance, we say there is an interaction of dictionary and contextual meanings.

So a dictionary meaning is materialized in the con­text; a contextual meaning is born in the context. Every word possesses an enormous potentiality for generating new meaning.

Many derivative meanings appeared and later entered the semantic structure of a word. E.g.: "a cut" - n; 1) act of cutting, stroke with a sword, whip etc; result of such a stroke, a deep cut in the leg, cuts on the face after sha­ving. 2) reduction in size, amount, length, etc: a cut in pri­ces (salaries, production). The second meaning of the word is considered to have derived from contextual mea­ning.