Meaningfor

Meaningfor is a neologism used in linguistics and philosophy of language to denote the intended communicative meaning an speaker aims to transmit in an utterance, within a given context. It focuses on what the speaker intends the listener to take away, rather than the bare semantic content of the sentence or the hearer’s surface interpretation.

The term is relatively new and not standardized. It has appeared in discussions on pragmatics and discourse analysis as a way to separate the speaker’s purpose from the literal proposition and from how a listener might ultimately interpret an utterance in a specific situation or culture.

In usage, meaningfor aligns with concepts like illocutionary force and speaker intention, but is distinguished from both the semantic content and from the listener’s inferred implications. For example, the sentence “It’s cold in here” can have a meaningfor of requesting someone to adjust the thermostat, even though its literal content is a proposition about temperature. In such cases, the meaningfor reflects the speaker’s intended effect on the audience.

Critics note that meaningfor overlaps with established ideas such as intention, speech act theory, and pragmatic implicature, and may be seen as redundant shorthand. Proponents argue that it offers a concise label for a speaker’s communicative aim across languages and modalities. See also: speech act theory, pragmatics, illocutionary act, communicative intention.