The Meaning of Meaning

The triangle of reference, or semiotic triangle. Figure taken from page 11 of The Meaning of Meaning.

The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (1923) is a book by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. It was published with two more essays (written opinions) by Bronisław Malinowski and F. G. Crookshank. The conception of the book rose up during a two-hour conversation between Ogden and Richards held on a staircase in a house next to the Cavendish Laboratories at 11 pm on Armistice Day, 1918.

Summary

The original text was published in 1923 and has been used as a textbook in many fields, including language and science. The book has been in print continuously since 1982. The latest edition is the critical edition prepared by W. Terrence Gordon as book 3 of the 5-volume set C. K. Ogden & Linguistics (London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1995).

Richards explains in detail a theory of Signs:that Words and Things are connected "through their event together with things, their linkage with them in a 'context' that Symbols come to play that important part in our life [even] the source of all our power over the external world" (47).

The book later influenced A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic, an introduction to logical positivism, and both the Richards–Ogden book and the Ayer book in turn influenced Alec King and Martin Ketley in the writing of their book The Control of Language, which appeared in 1939, and which influenced C. S. Lewis in the writing of his defence of natural law and objective values, The Abolition of Man (1943). In 1975, Hilary Putnam published his book The Meaning of "Meaning", making a "direct" reference to Ogden and Richards earlier work.