Dynamic Meaning Of English Words

Word meaning is an important concept in linguistics. With the development of linguistic interdisciplinary study, researches on lexical meaning have been shifted from the static sense in semantics or communicative function to the whole dialogue or context in pragmatics.Based on lexical pragmatics, relevance theory and pragmatic enrichment, this study takes the daily conversations as materials and combines word meaning with its communicative function to research on the determination and practical usages of word meaning from different contexts. Findings have been discovered in the study.Firstly, word meaning is flexible and changeable; it is influenced by various factors of context in communication apart from its static meaning; it develops the dynamic meaning and adjusts better to context and makes sure the accomplishment of conversation based on its literal meaning and prototypical meaning.Secondly, the concept and word meaning are interrelated and interdependent. The token concept is a kind of concept on the basis of the type concept; the dynamic meaning of a word is provided by its token concept. The dynamic meaning of a word is the meaning constructed by the token concept pragmatically inferred on the basis of the contextual information and type concept encoded by the word. The dynamic meaning of a word is provided by the token concept obtained from the communicative process, in which the hearer adjusts the encoded concept of the word to the contextual information under the guidance of relevant expectation.Thirdly, the process of achieving dynamic meaning of a word is like the process of searching for relevance in discourse interaction. During this process, the communicator adjusts the word meaning to the specific context through narrowing and broadening. Narrowing refers to the encoded meaning of a word is more narrow than its prototype meaning in specific context; broadening refers to the pragmatic weakening and extending of its prototype meaning in specific context. This study will make theoretic and practical contributions to the development of lexical pragmatics and the teaching of English vocabulary.