USAGE OF TC@UC METHODS OR HYBRID SEMANTICS IN PEJORATIVE’S ANALYSIS

Abstract

The article outlines the basic principles of hybrid semantics that employs both, descriptive and causal dimensions simultaneously, since there are many expressions, simple or complex, that are called mixed or hybrid expressions and that contribute to the general understanding of pejoratives or any other emotive words. Pragmatic theories of “meaning as use” are often regarded as fundamentally opposed to traditional truth-conditional semantics. However, David Kaplan‟s researchshows conditions of use can and should have a place in formal approaches to natural language meaning. His project is based on the observation that for certain expressions of natural language, a correct semantic theory would state rules of use rather than something like a concept expressed. It is supported by Wittgenstein‟s Philosophical Investigations that for a large class of cases (though not for all) in which we employ the word meaning it can be defined thus: the meaningof a word is its use in the language (…) [1]. He develops a multidimen-sional approach to meaning, which the author calls hybrid semantics (HS) for short that incorporates use conditions alongside truth conditions in a unified framework. This system overcomes the observational, empirical gaps and theoretical and conceptual problems of previous frameworks of multidimensional semantics [2]. This approach is able to deal not only with the standard cases of pejoratives, but also with other kinds of use-conditional items that are often overlooked in the current literature. According to the researches in a field of HS, the idea is to use a use-conditional perspective to supplement truth-conditional semantics, but not to replace it entirely, in order to extend conventional semantic methods to expressions and meaning aspects that, from a purely truth-conditional perspective, are considered to fall outside the scope of conventional semantics.