The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (1923)
This work has been used as a textbook in many fields including linguistics, philosophy, language, cognitive science and most recently semantics and semiotics in general. The chief idea probably is that Words and Things are connected “through their occurrence 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”.
In this context system, the authors develop a 3-part semiotics—symbol, thought and referent with three relations between them. Symbols are then “those signs which men use to communicate one with another and as instruments of thought, occupy a peculiar place… All discursive symbolization involves… weaving together of contexts into higher contexts… So, for a word to be understood requires that it form a context with further experiences”…