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2. Leech’s Seven Types of Meaning 
2.1 The Complexity of “Meaning” 
In his work “Semantics. The Study of Meaning” published in the year 1981, Geoffrey 
Leech establishes at that time one of the most thorough classifications of the term “Meaning” 
from a semantic point of view. 
In order to do so, Leech first puts emphasis on the problematics of the term itself and 
names different authors who dealt with this subject so as to accentuate the complexity of the 
topic. With regards to this, he mentions the book written by C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards, 
published in 1923, who found twenty-two definitions for the word “meaning”. (1981, 1) 
Leech then states that ten years after Ogden’s and Richards’ publishing, in 1933, 
Leonard Bloomfield in his work “Language” shared the same viewpoint regarding the future 
of the “Meaning” as the two aforementioned authors. The main point of both sides was that 
the scientific advancements would be of great help in defining the term “Meaning”.
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(1981, 2): 
“The statement of meanings is therefore the weak point in language-study, and will 
remain so until human knowledge advances very far beyond its present-state” (Bloomfield 
1933, 140)
One might ask himself what the importance of the establishing a theory of semantics 
is, and Leech has the answer. He states that the main point regarding this question is to 
provide “a systematic account of the nature of meaning”. (1981, 4) Additionally, he explains 
how this can be done, namely by semanticists focusing on studying the relations within the 
language. The whole concept in Leech’s opinion rests on 
the distinction between meaningful 
and meaningless utterances
in relation to “the knowledge of language” and “the knowledge of 
the real world”. (1981, 4-6) 
To exemplify this statement, Leech provides two opposed sentences, each of which is 
characterized by the discrepancies relating to either “real world” or “language”: 
1)
My uncle always sleeps on one toe. (inconsistent with the “real world”) 
2)
My uncle always sleeps awake. (inconsistent with the “language”) (1981, 6) 
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It would be interesting to e
ngage in a detailed diachronic analysis of the definition of the term “Meaning”, 
which would include the time period of almost a hundred years (1923, i.e. Ogden and Richards - 2018), but the 
scope of this paper cannot incorporate a work of that amount. 

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