Saussure- 'signifier' and 'signified' (signifié).
Semiotic triangle – Ogden-Richards in “the meaning of meaning”. The dog as a linguistic expression signifies and denotes a real object through the sense of the referent. These are a sound image and a concept, linked by a psychological ‘associative’ bond.. The symbol is the linguistic element (word, sentence, etc.) The referent is the object in the world of experience.
There is no direct link between the symbol and the referent (between language and the world); the link is via thought or concepts.
What is really the link between ‘symbol’ and ‘concept’?
One answer is as follows: the link is psychological, so that when we think of a name we think of a concept and vice versa. However, the problem with this account is that we always have to have an ‘image’ when we talk about an object. However, we simply do not always visualise objects in our mind’s eye as this would hinder communication.
Another explanation We may also think about the link as some kind of ‘permanent association’ stored in the mind (brain). This is a circular definition, says Palmer, because whenever we have a word there will be a concept, and the concept will be the ‘meaning of the word’. Palmer is against Mentalism. As Chomsky and Jackendoff (among others) are two of the mentalists that accept a conceptual view of meaning, we should emphasize that Frank Palmer is opposed to such an approach.
The ghost-in-the-machine objection: nothing is gained by moving meaning closer to the mind (brain). Concepts (if there were any) are inaccessible in principle to anyone but the individual, which is complete subjectivism. Introspection, as proposed by Chomsky and rejeted by Palmer as it is is a procedure that neglects empirical data**, recordings and texts. It is only ‘fishing in our tank’ (Firth). - Behaviourist in Disguise
Palmer: meaning is ‘elusive’. Palmer insists that semantics ought to try to understand how it is that words and sentences can ‘mean’ at all, or how they can be meaningful. Words and sentences needn’t really have meaning, in the literal sense of ‘having’. It is something they are or aren’t (meaningful) Palmer uses Wittgenstein’s dictum: “Don’t look for the meaning of a word, look for its use”.