'Varieties of Meaning' by Prof. Franson Manjali

Meaning, one of the most ubiquitous phenomena of our quotidian life, is also perhaps the most difficult to figure. The varieties of meaning, or the attempts to understand meaning are as ‘mindboggling’ as the approaches to figure mind. Mind and meaning, which depend on and elude each other, can only be figured, but never conclusively. A short survey of the figures of meaning, from different traditions and schools is attempted here. These include the philosophical, semiotic and cognitive approaches, such the sign, embodied meaning, interpretation, sense (in many senses), reference, metaphor, trace, différance, sphota, apoha, rasa, jouissance, etc.

* Meaning in / of Life: the location of meaning?
* ‘Meaning of Meaning’: The ‘semiotic triangle’
* Sense and Reference. (Sinn und bedeutung): Truth and Meaning.
* Meaning for behavioural (structural) linguistics:

L. Bloomfield (Language, 1923) : The situations which prompt people to utter speech include every object and happening in the universe. In order to give a scientifically accurate definition of meaning for every form of a language, we should have a scientifically accurate knowledge of everything in the speaker’s world. The actual extent of human knowledge is very small compared to this.

"the statement of meaning is, therefore, the weak point of linguistic study, and will remain so until human knowledge advances far beyond its present state."

* C. S. Peirce and Semiotics: Icon, Index and Symbol.
* Saussure, Semiology and signification:
* Phenomenology: knowledge as meaning, and intention.
* Hermeneutics: Meaning of being; ontico-ontological difference.
* Linguistic relativism of Sapir and Whorf.
* Indian Theories of Meaning: Sphota and Apoha; Rasa and Artha
* Structuralism and the humanities: Jouissance
* Lacanian psychoanalysis:
* Speech acts: performative.
* Post-structuralism.
* Derrida: Writing, trace, and difference
* Levinas: Sense and Trace.
* Writing and Sense: Jean-Luc Nancy.
* Morphogenesis of Meaning.
* Formal Semantics: Narrow and Broad Content.
* Body, Mind and Meaning: Metaphor and the Metaphor of Language; ‘Accusative’ model of language.
* Neuroplasticity and Metamorphosis.