The Meaning of “X": Study of Meaning from the Perspectives of Semantics and Pragmatics

This article is a tentative study of the relationship between semantics and pagmatics through a detailed analysis of Leech’s classical questions about the meaning of X. It makes a discrimination of the different aspects of meaning that the two branches of linguistics focus upon respectively. Both semantics and pragmatics are studies of the meanings of language. Semantics studies the meaning within the system of language while pragmatics studies the meaning with the speaker involved, that is to say from the social angle. Pragmatics is based on the knowledge of semantics. Given the fact that neither semantics nor pragmatics alone can solve the myth of the meaning of language, it may not be wise to make a clear cut between semantics and pragmatics.\;