APPROACHES TO MEANING AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR AN ESL CONTEXT

Abstract

The complex nature of meaning investigation underlies this paper. It seeks, among other things, to unfold the true relationship between signs and what they stand for,' whether the meanings of lexical items are, to a large extent, generated intrinsically or arbitrarily. In view of the intricacies associated with the phenomenon, diachronic and synchronic approaches of meaning relagions are brought to the fore, taking time to identify the implication of convention on meaning explication in an ESL context.