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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 9
Publication Date: September 25, 2022
DOI:10.14738/assrj.99.13057. Liele Madzou, D. A. (2022). Expressions and Meanings: A Phenomenological Approach to Semantics. Advances in Social Sciences
Research Journal, 9(9). 131-142.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Expressions and Meanings: A Phenomenological Approach to
Semantics
Desmond Auffrey LIELE MADZOU
Laboratory for Multidisciplinary Studies and
Research in Human Sciences and the Environment (LERPSHE)
Marien Ngouabi University
ABSTRACT
This article aims to analyze the relationship between ''saying'' and the ''meaning of
saying'' under the banner of phenomenology. It is a question of resolving the conflict
between the enunciation as the communicative background of an axiom and the
content of knowledge as the intention of a thing. This is the problem of language and
of the ontological description of the expressed object. This research tends to put
back on the table of philosophy the claim of formal logic to want, wrongly, to claim
to define the fundamental meanings by semantics. This research aims to posit
saying as an expression referring to something. It reveals the uniqueness that
naturally exists between saying and meaning in the noema-noesis relationship.
Aware that all of life is language, this article sets out to establish the distinction
between modes of reasoning and forms of reasoning in order to account for
meanings as the meaning of saying. By scrutinizing the notion of judgment, it follows
that significations as expressed meaning are phenomena.
Keywords: Expression; formal logic, phenomenology, meaning, meaning, semantics.
INTRODUCTION
The world is experiencing an uninterrupted evolution in the field of communication. This
evolution inaugurates the digital era where we are witnessing the development of several
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) processes. Communication as the art of
transmitting a message is a process of language, as a system of signs. The question of language
is of paramount importance here. The whole issue revolves around understanding and being
understood. This is the problem of meaning or signification with which the human is however
confronted. Clarifying the relationship between expressions and meanings becomes a
necessity. Such a problem can only be envisaged on a philosophical ground where the notion of
signification lends itself to several interpretations; on the one hand, the philosophy of language
and on the other, phenomenology as the science of what appears with its meaning
(phenomenon). It is in this philosophical dialogue that one can perceive the meaning stripped
of all misinterpretation.
Historically, the question of signification as the meaning of saying goes back to Parmenides 1and
will be more explicit with Aristotle. The latter deploys his understanding of the meaning of
1
Cf. The question of being and non-being as presented by Parmenides in Fragment VI: “ To say and to think being
because there is being. »
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propositions in Categories 2where the meaning of the expression is a logical proposition, of type
true or false from the point of view of form. Meaning would result, under these conditions, from
the relation of the subject to the predicate; coherence is here the criterion for justifying the
meaning of propositions.
In contemporary times, the debate is enriched by the philosophers of language, more precisely
the Viennese Circle 3for whom the meaning in a general way would refer to the form of the
axiom to be true or false and that the expression as a sentence has in it’s formulating a meaning.
However, this position, although common for the tenors of logical empiricism, will not be
unanimous4.
In Principles of Mathematics, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) presents three dimensions of the
notion of meaning. First, signification as immediate reference to the thing. Here, signification is
an ontological notion. It is, therefore, around the notion of meaning that its apprehension is
articulated. Then the meaning will be logical in terms of denotation as a linguistic constructive
expression referring indirectly to logical objects. Finally, meaning is understood through the
notion of sense in its signifying modality. Here, we are in the syntactic dimension of meaning.
This internal multi-interpretation of the Vienna Circle denotes the urgency of clarifying the
notion of meaning.
To pose expressions and meanings, for us, implies to pose the saying, as an assembly of words
expressed, that is to say, brought outside in order to be understood, regardless of the mode of
expression5. It is about unveiling the meaning of the ideas expressed, which will therefore be
subject to judgment in order to bring out the expected meaning: this is the objective of this
research.
The problem that this article tends to solve is that of questioning the validity of the discourse,
which will induce the problem of veracity. This is probably the problem of language and the
ontological description of the expressed object. In other words, of the relationship between
saying and the meaning of saying.
Our problematic consists in showing that the notion of signification springs from the
resolution of the conflict between the enunciation as the communicative background of an
axiom and the content of knowledge as the intention of a thing. The answer to the following
questions makes it possible to elucidate this approach: is the axiomatic enough to pretend to
2
ARISTOTLE 1977, Organon , Paris, Vrin. 3
Vienna Circle: Moritz Schlick, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, George Edward Moore, David Hilbert, Henri
Poincaré, Karl Popper, Gottlob Frege...
4
According to Jean Louis VAXELAIRE, “ A new terminological problem arises when approaching the shores of logic:
if Mill used grammatical proper names for his examples, the proper names of Frege and Russell are very different from
the classical definition. Thus, for Frege, the capital of the German empire or What increased by 2 gives 4 are proper
nouns since they designate a singular object. Russell's definition is of another order: logical proper names are limited to
this and that , the only terms which are simple symbols and irreducible to analysis. » Cf. Vaxelaire JL, 2008, Etymology,
significance and meaning, in World Congress of French Linguistics (CMLF), Paris, Institute of French Linguistics, p.
2189.
5
MORAND Bernard writes about the modes of expression that: “ All are not necessarily verbalized, and even less
written in the written sentence of the language. » Cf. MORAND Bernard, 1996, The senses of meaning. For an a priori
theory of the sign, in Intellectica , Vol., 2, no 25 , p. 232.
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Liele Madzou, D. A. (2022). Expressions and Meanings: A Phenomenological Approach to Semantics. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,
9(9). 131-142.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.99.13057
identify the content of the object? In order to express oneself, does meaning necessarily pass
through formal propositions? In other words, is every expression significant? Doesn't the
meaning emerge rather from the noetic-noematic relationship? In other words, how does the
judgment reveal the fundamental meanings?
The expected results correspond to the verification of the following hypotheses:
- Axiomatic would not suffice to define the meaning of saying;
- Meaning would result from the noetic-noematic relationship;
- The judgment would hint at the basic meanings
METHOD
To verify these hypotheses, we follow the method of phenomenological hermeneutics. We
analyze the concepts summoned in a noetic sphere where understanding is an experience of
consciousness. It is a dialogue of our consciousness in relation to the problem of the meaning
of discourse. The conclusions that flow from this research are an articulation between the
present of the reader's consciousness and the world of the texts summoned and their authors (C.
Boundja, 2019, p. 17). Which means that it is a phenomenological interpretation of the problem
raised in this research. To do this, it is a philosophical necessity to clearly elucidate the terms
expressions and meaning, to then join them in order to better understand the crux of the
formulation of this research.
- Phrases
An expression is a communication of ideas; it is the fact of expressing oneself through language,
therefore through a sign code. It is a manifestation of thought. Philosophically, the term
expression implies bringing outside a cognitive pressure, in terms of the desire to speak in order
to be understood. If it is established that the term expression has for root the verb to express,
expression would mean to take precedence outside as an assembly of words carrying a semantic
density. To express is thus an “exposure of a signified and of an original meaning”6. Expression,
as the action of representing, is the expression of a meaning.
- Meanings
The term signification, derived from the Latin significatio or the verb significare, evokes the idea
of the meaning attached to a thing. In linguistics, signification is the correlation between the
signifier and the signified, the object and its objectivity. The signifier is what signifies, what
expresses signification; it is the object that expresses a meaning. The signified, moreover, is
what a signifier represents, the concept. This is the meaning of a sign. French Rastier presents
this approach in these terms: " the sign results according to us from the process of interpretation,
because its signifier is not given to a simplex apprehensio , but identified only in a practice, and
its signified is not immanent to it: in short, a sign can only be identified as a moment in an
interpretative journey. ” 7Here is a fairly realistic position of what is called par signified.
However, this approach is not unanimous. Faced with these linguistic nuances, it is a successful
intelligence to approach the concept of meaning on a philosophical field in order to spare us
these grammatical turns and return to the concept as it appears to us.
6
BOUNDJA C., 2018, Thus spoke, Studies on the language of Nietzsche and African orality , Paris, Presses
Académiques Francophones, p. 3.
7
RASTIER F., 1996, Issues of sign and text, Intellectica , Vol., 2, no 23 , p. 31.
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In philosophy, meaning is the product of judgment. The problem is to determine the type of
judgment that lets us glimpse the fundamental, original meanings, those which translate the
apodictic sense of the object. It is here that the notion of signification lends itself to several
interpretations, depending on the field in which we situate it. However, since it is a question, in
the context of this study, of disentangling the meaning attached to an expression, to a code of
words, the meanings to be alluded to here are those that the subject experiences and expresses
through language. . These meanings are, therefore, meaningful representations. The concept of
meaning thus elucidated, its relationship to the term expression does not arise, because any
expression should carry a meaning, perhaps in the background, but which the judgment
undertakes to reveal. Seen from this angle, the expression is a saying from which is extracted a
''say'' as speech or code of words and sonority which hides a meaning. Therefore, “The word
signifies, concealing what it signifies; it sports a sound image and keeps behind the signified or the
hidden meaning of which it is the image. In this sense, we sometimes speak without
communicating, utter words without being able to convey the desired message. This statement
suggests that the “said” extracted from saying as expression carries within it the depth of a
meaning that is often unsaid, but which must be detected. 8 The relationship between
expressions and meanings is a relationship of necessity.
STATE OF THE QUESTION
Analytical philosophy, sometimes in linguistics... means in relation to that of the expression.
However, meaning, being a polysemic term and the fact that it engages the notion of truth,
arouses the interest of several fields of knowledge, the case of phenomenology.
Recently in 2020, Philippe Lacier published an article in the Revue Etudes ricoeurienne, entitled
Meaning and reflexivity in the philosophy of Ricœur where he places meaning in his position of
the relationship to the object which refers to a meaning. Lacour thinks that signification is the
very element of philosophy, its environment, its materials and the sign characterized by its
function of reference9. It should be noted here that meaning refers to the meaning that an
expression suggests.
In 2019, a Philosophy Colloquium, Logic and argumentation: around philosophical discourse,
Acts of the First Doctoral Days of Philosophy , brought together researchers in Brazzaville
(Congo) to discuss the relationship between logic, as a science of reasoning, and argumentation,
as the art of self-expression. The most unexpected moment of this colloquium was the
presentation of the communication on ''Logos, noema, noesis, a phenomenological approach to
philosophical discourse 10'' where the author, Claver Boundja, introduces phenomenology to
think of logical reasoning as heir metaphysical premises as conceived by Parmenides, and
recovered by German phenomenology. From then on, meaning is no longer proper to formal
logic which, moreover, does not account for fundamental meanings, in terms of experiences of
consciousness.
8
BOUNDJA C., 2018, Thus spoke, Studies on the language of Nietzsche and African orality , Paris, Presses
Académiques Francophones, p. 3.
9
LACOUR Ph., 2020, Meaning and reflexivity in the philosophy of Ricoeur, in Etude ricoeurienne , Vol., 11, no 1 , p.
86.
10BOUNDJA C., 2019, Logos, noema, noesis, a phenomenological approach to philosophical discourse, Logic and
argumentation: around philosophical discourse, Acts of the First Doctoral Days of Philosophy, Brazzaville, April 15-20,
2019, Under the direction of Emmanuel BANYWESIZE MUKAMBILWA and Marcel NGUIMBI, Paris, L'Harmattan,
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Liele Madzou, D. A. (2022). Expressions and Meanings: A Phenomenological Approach to Semantics. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,
9(9). 131-142.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.99.13057
In 2008, the World Congress of French Linguistics (CMLF) presented the limits of the
understanding of meaning as envisaged by analytic philosophy. Jean-Louis Vaxelaire, one of the
participants, underlines in his presentation that the notion of signification raises recurring
polemics and hides two types of terminology problems. He says it in these terms:
“First of all, under the name of meaning we classify three very different elements:
etymology (or motivation in the synchronic perspective), signification and
meaning. We then note a proliferation of terms in this debate: sense, signification,
reference, designation, content, informative content, denotation, connotations,
intension, extension, etc. The terms are many, they sometimes overlap or conflict,
but ultimately it is difficult to find common ground on them. »11
It should be noted here that analytic philosophy finds it difficult to provide a singular definition
of signification, because it is caught in linguistic turns that sometimes oppose each other. There
is an urgent need to redirect this debate. Our research follows this logic. All the aforementioned
studies have shown that, far from satisfying all minds, the philosophy of language seems to
distance the human subject from the perception of the fundamental sense of meaning. Here, we
then understand the advent of phenomenology to put signification as the meaning of saying
into its apodictic context.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
- Expressions and Meanings: A Necessary Correlation
The question relating to expressions and meanings is heir to Aristotle's syllogisms, where logic
seeks to formally clarify mathematical propositions. However, the avenue in the ranks of
researchers (in the 19th and 20th and philosophers of linguistic tendency will orient the debate
on the notion of meaning in the field of the correct judgment of propositions. The problem that
arises under this aspect is that of questioning the validity of knowledge, which will induce the
problem of veracity. This is why, fundamentally, it is a matter of the question of sense as the
signification of propositions.
If it is admitted that the analysis of knowledge in its constitutive structure comes from an
analysis of the meaning of the objects that are offered to human subjects, it follows that the
question of the notion of meaning is of the order of ontology as Parmenides had advocated in
antiquity. This is the problem of saying as expression (ausdrück) and of meaning (sinn) as
signification (bedeutung) of saying. Thus, from the point of view of logicians, the notion of
meaning is crucial to appreciate scientific propositions. However, to think of meaning under the
paradigm of logic, because being the science of reasoning, does not allow us to glimpse the
notion of the essence of the object, the core of the very knowledge of the object. Logic should
propose to “begin (...) with a study of expressions and meanings.” 12Such is the climate that
plagues the philosophy of language. The notion of signification here lends itself to several
interpretations (meaning, significance, expression, representation, etc.). The debate being thus
variously apprehended even within philosophers of language, the interest of phenomenology
11VAXELAIRE JL, 2008, Etymology, significance and meaning, in World Congress of French Linguistics (CMLF),
Paris, Institute of French Linguistics, p. 2187.
12BOUNDJA C., 2018, The problem of rigorous science in Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, International Journal of
Science and Research (IJSR), Vol., 7, p. 954. (We translate).
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emerges here. The Congolese philosopher, Claver Boundja, presents the situation of the
philosophy of language (of the 20th century), facing phenomenology, on semantics in these terms:
«The particularity of the philosophy of language in relation to phenomenology resides in the
consideration according to which, everything is mediation in the order of understanding, that it is
from the medium of language that one must glimpse an opening to something which is not
language (...) On the other hand, phenomenology enlightens the philosophy of ordinary language
on the danger of getting lost in semantic exercises on expressions of the English language, for
example. »13
The problem that Bound presents is that of thinking the expression as saying a reality, but also
apprehending this reality. This position poses phenomenology as a science which “attempts to
relate language, taken as a whole and in a general sense, to the modes of apprehension of reality
which come to expression in discourse. The expression 14is a said referring to something, and the
signification would be a significant thought come into existence in a discourse.
It is a question of establishing eidetically the notion of signification which would be the source
of a significant expression of consciousness. Edmund Husserl, the father of phenomenology,
believes that such an approach is possible only if one proceeds by distinguishing between the
two kinds of meanings, namely particular meanings and meaning in its generality. Particular
meanings relate to “concepts, propositions, connection of proposition, (which) are objects of a
possible science ” 15. It is therefore a question here of the determined significations of the
singular sciences.
However, signification in its generality is signification in the fundamental sense and relates to
significations independently of their particularization in singular sciences. Meaning in its
generality concerns “specifically different kinds or forms which are based in general on the most
general essence (allgemeinsten) of meaning... ” 16That is to say that the quest for meaning in its
generality or meaning fundamental would be the work of a science other than logic. It must be
admitted that “There must surely be a science which searches for the essentially different forms
or kinds of meaning, the different modes according to which, from elementary forms, higher more
complicated forms are constructed, and which searches, in moreover, what laws 17of validity are
essentially based on these forms.
13BOUNDJA C., 2019, Logos, noema, noesis, a phenomenological approach to philosophical discourse, Logic and
argumentation: around philosophical discourse, Acts of the First Doctoral Days of Philosophy, Brazzaville, April 15-20,
2019, under the direction of Emmanuel BANYWESIZE MUKAMBILWA and Marcel NGUIMBI, Paris, L'Harmattan,
p. 117.
14 BOUNDJA C., 2019, Logos, noema, noesis, a phenomenological approach to philosophical
discourse, Logic and argumentation: around philosophical discourse, Acts of the First Doctoral Days
of Philosophy, Brazzaville, April 15-20, 2019, under the direction of Emmanuel BANYWESIZE
MUKAMBILWA and Marcel NGUIMBI, Paris, L'Harmattan, p. 109. 15HUSSERL Ed., 1998, Introduction to logic and the theory of knowledge , Course (1906-1907), Preface by Jacques
English, Translated by Laurent Joumier, Paris, Vrin, p. 90. 16Ibid. p. 90-91. 17idem.
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9(9). 131-142.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.99.13057
Here, the meaning bears on the pure forms of the propositions and their junctions. It is a
question, therefore, of significations as the eidetic sense of expressions that logic cannot
perceive. In other words, logical norms as rules cannot account for ideal meanings.
To probably realize the inability of logic to account for fundamental meanings, it is a successful
intelligence to proceed by distinguishing between the mode of reasoning and the forms of
reasoning.
- Mode of reasoning and forms of reasoning
The present distinction between the mode of reasoning and the forms of reasoning makes it
possible to think about the problem of expression and signification, and at the same time to
realize the domain where the signification would be lodged. It must be said that the mode of
reasoning aims to provide proof (case of mathematics; geometry with for example the
Euclidean demonstration of the sum of the angles) while the forms of reasoning or a
demonstration tends towards a form of unity of meanings, that is to say towards something
stable of the ideal validity of a proposition. In other words, the forms of reasoning refer to the
ideal sense of saying, to the singular significant idea of an utterance, to such an extent that sense
and signification become synonymous as envisaged by Lerat 18.
The present question is: what is this science which deals with forms of reasoning? In other
words, what is this science which concerns fundamental meanings? If we consider meanings in
the psychological sense as representations associatively attached to words, the science of
meanings would have its roots in psychology, and that " formal logical laws are laws of formal
truth or are laws for judgments, for only in judgments is truth " 19. Judgment must be posited,
believing this clarification, as a psychic activity from which meanings spring. To judge would
thus be to draw conclusions by reasoning, by demonstration. Consequently, judging, as a
psychic activity, cannot be the province of formal logic.
Meanings are, from a psychological point of view, subjective representations, and therefore acts
of judgment. The science that bears on significations would be a science of the description of
psychic experiences in contact with the external expression of these experiences. This science
is a psychology rooted in the concept of intentionality, a psychology that would be
phenomenology.
Meanings are therefore understood as concepts resulting from a judgment acting as meaning.
Since it must be admitted that each proposition contains even a concept referring to the object
about which the proposition posits something, it follows that the notion of signification
integrates or is articulated around the notion of judgment.
The problem of expression and signification arises basically, not in logic, but in psychology,
which must be phenomenological. The whole reproach addressed to logic is to have ignored the
size distinction between representations and judgments; disregarding the content of the
concepts in the proposal. It must be remembered that meanings are the products of judgment
18LERAT P., 1983, Descriptive semantics , Paris, Hachette. 19HUSSERL Ed., 1998, Introduction to logic and the theory of knowledge , Course (1906-1907), Preface by Jacques
English, Translated by Laurent Joumier, Paris, Vrin, p. 92.
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and are the work of psychic activity; it is phenomenology that accounts for this aspect of
signification.
To better understand the crucial function that judgment plays in the account of meaning, we
will focus our attention on the relationship between idea and judgment to evacuate the logical
confusions that we may come up against in the analysis of the notion of meaning as meaning of
the say.
- Idea and judgment
To raise the notion of judgment in order to better apprehend the expression as saying endowed
with meaning, is to posit judgment as an ultimately eidetic act from which meaning is stripped
of all empirical pretension. The history of philosophy places Aristotle as the one who made
logic, in terms of syllogism, a science in its own right which deals with reasoning. It is a question
of bringing back the meanings around the subject.
In fact, from the point of view of the modern interpretation of logic in Aristotle, the subject,
designated by S in a proposition, is connected by a copula ⊂ to a predicate denoted by P, (S ⊂
P). The predicate is the attribute to which the subject corresponds. From the angle of logic in
Aristotle, logical propositions must be constructed in a precise order: the subject of the
conclusion must be present in one of the premises (normally the minor), it’s predicate in the
other so that the syllogism is valid. The subject is therefore defined in relation to the attributes
of the predicate, not in relation to its manifestation to consciousness.
In reality, the copula introduces a relationship between Subject and Predicate, so that the
qualities and characteristics of the predicate are immediately embodied by the subject. Thus,
judgment, as Aristotle conceives it, is conditioned by an empirical reality, a factual given
(predicate). This analysis dear to logic in Aristotle distances us from the adequate
understanding of judgment, judgment as product of consciousness, as noesis.
Centuries before the advent of phenomenology, Descartes presents judgment through the
concept of the cogito. To understand quite clearly what judgment refers to from the angle of
phenomenology, it would be interesting to open a breach in the Cartesian cogito.
The cogito, as a thinking subject, is in the identity of consciousness and in the immediate
grasping of itself by itself as being. From Descartes' point of view, the subject is that for which
or for whom there is a representation and, therefore, also that for which or for whom there is
knowledge. The subject would be identified with the I, with a thinking I (cogito).
This conception of the subject of Descartes did not appear fully in his early philosophical works,
notably in the Discourse on Method ( 1637 ), but rather it was only really developed in the
Metaphysical Meditations ( 1641 ), in the form of what can be described as hyperbolic doubt.
Here, the I becomes a first principle, a thinking subject, according to the formula of the cogito
ergo sum. It is a withdrawal into oneself; the Cartesian I is pure interiority. Judgment, from
Descartes' point of view, would therefore be the fruit of a pure interiority without any
exteriority (of consciousness). This is why, if we focus our attention on the notion of
representation in Descartes, we will see that the Cartesian I encloses knowledge whereas the
world is a world of meanings, a world to be conquered by consciousness. .
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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.99.13057
The limits of this Cartesian I open the way to phenomenology which puts the term judgment
back into the expression of the epoche. In the Cartesian Meditations (1929), Husserl considers
that the vocation of consciousness is to explore the phenomena which present themselves to it.
This is how he points out that “Descartes does not grasp its proper meaning, that of
transcendental subjectivity. He does not cross the portal which leads to true transcendental
philosophy20. So, alongside an I withdrawn into itself, Husserl opposes a transcendental I , a
phenomenalizing I from which the eidetic judgment derives.
The judgment is therefore the work of a subject realized after epoche and not the act of
predicating (that is to say the subject attributed to a predicate) as Aristotle would have wished,
no longer an action of the subject withdrawn on oneself as defended by Descartes. It is thought
that judges. Judgment as an act carries meanings. The judgment is accomplished by the psychic
act, therefore proceeds from the subjective world so that “All thought and all knowledge is
something subjective, a psychic act, which comes and goes, begins and stops ” 21. The relationship
between idea and judgment assumes that “our ideas are the basis of our judgments”22. It follows
therefore that the idea founds the judgment from which derives the meaning of the object. Thus,
the notion of the representation or the apprehension of knowledge comes from the analysis
that the subject makes of the way in which the phenomena appear. Judgment is judgment of a
state of judged things. The meaning of expressions, in terms of meanings, is established by the
human subject. To say it is already in itself an appearance endowed with meaning. The meaning
of expressions derives from the interpretation made by the human subject because any
expression contains a concept, that is to say a representation, a signified or the thing endowed
with meaning. The expression as said, " confers on the act of speaking the power to hold a
supplement of meaning, so that the prisoner (signified) is each time released in the breath which
carries it, by way of enlargement towards the outside. . This analysis is a phenomenological
interpretation of the term to 23express, that is to say to manifest one outside. In the act of saying,
there is indeed an experience which is exteriorized as verbal expression. It is the subject who
is the interpreter of the meaning of the expressions offered to him.
Here, the trilogy is formed: Human subject-Expression-Meaning, as represented in the table
below:
20HUSSERL Ed., 1947, Cartesian Meditations , Translation by Gabrielle Pfeiffer and Emmanuel Levinas, Paris, Vrin, p.
52.
21HUSSERL Ed., 1998, Introduction to logic and the theory of knowledge , Course (1906-1907), Preface by Jacques
English, Translated by Laurent Joumier, Paris, Vrin, p. 187.
22BOUNDJA C., 2018, The problem of rigorous science in Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, International Journal of
Science and Research (IJSR), Vol., 7, p. 954. (We translate). 23Same .
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This painting shows that expression as verbal exposition carries something within itself as an
object; it is therefore a signified from which meaning springs. From a phenomenological point
of view, “the essence of meaning refers to intentional content. This content is a set of psychological
experiences, which brings together both the phenomena of words, in the visual and acoustic sense,
and the acts of objectifying interpretation which bring the words back into the order of space and
time. In this sense, to interpret a word is to rediscover its meaning within us, as a psychic presence
of meaning. » 24It is established here that signification is an experience of consciousness, it
would be « an ideal identical meaning » 25to the concept of a proposition.
CONCLUSION
This article presented meaning in a phenomenological approach. In the name of
interdisciplinarity, the dialogue between the philosophy of language and phenomenology has
been established to identify the relationship between expressions and meanings. It is a question
here of the problem of language and of the ontological description of the expressed object.
Faced with such a problem, it is necessary to return to the apprehension of meaning as it is
given to consciousness in order to understand meanings stripped of all empirical claims.
For a serious analysis of the relationship between expressions and meanings, we have
interpreted the two concepts (Expressions and meanings) separately with the ideal of joining
them in order to disentangle the meaning attached to an expression. Philosophically, the term
expression evokes the idea of bringing cognitive pressure to the outside, in terms of the desire to
speak in order to be understood. Having express as its verbal source, expression would mean
taking precedence outside as an assembly of words carrying a semantic density. On the other
hand, we have kept in mind, beyond the interpretations that the concept of signification lends
itself to, significations as representations endowed with meaning (associatively attached to
words), experiences of consciousness.
Such an approach would have meanings established by the human subject. They are therefore
intentional contents resulting from the acts of interpretation that we can name by judgment.
The phenomenological approach to semantics that we are advocating here has given us the
opportunity to appreciate the relationship between saying and the meaning of saying under the
24BOUNDJA C., 2019, Bantucracy, political theory for the coming time , Paris, L'Harmattan,
"African Studies" collection, Political Series, p. 176.
25HUSSERL Ed., 1998, Introduction to logic and the theory of knowledge , Course (1906-1907), Preface by Jacques
English, Translated by Laurent Joumier, Paris, Vrin, p. 94.
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Liele Madzou, D. A. (2022). Expressions and Meanings: A Phenomenological Approach to Semantics. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,
9(9). 131-142.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.99.13057
term expressions and meanings . This relationship is explained in the human subject-expression- meaning trilogy. This trilogy stipulates that the meaning of expressions derives from the
interpretation made by the human subject. We conclude that every expression contains a
concept, that is to say a representation, a signified or the thing endowed with meaning.
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