The topic that I am interested in exploring is the elements of meaning; word meaning, sentence meaning, and utterance meaning. I find this topic to be extremely interesting because you can connect your perception to those of others and see the boundary of differences in what one may consider a sarcastic or sincere response versus what someone else may believe. Not only this but I think this topic is open for a wide range of discussion with the variables in consideration.

I will make a clear distinction between sentence versus utterance meaning. Sentences convey meaning through clauses while utterances convey meaning through few words that may not even be a complete clause. Although sentence meaning overall is the same, utterance meaning os completely different (for example “good for you’ said either sincerely or sarcastically).

I think I want to conduct both my own research as well as use research from various internet sources. What I would want to do in my research is ask people some words/phrases that they find can be said both sincerely and sarcastically. I would ask them to mark instances that these could be used in as well as why they may think people can use the words in either context. I think I may break it up into people who have taken linguistics versus those who haven’t to see how responses differ. 

I think this topic could be extremely reflective on the way language influences the way we think. It conveys the difference between sentence and utterance meanings and how our interpretations are distorted in a way. Im not entirely sure about how I will break up paragraphs but I will make sure all the information I want to convey is there. As for another big point of discussion for this topic I’m not entirely sure of what to dive into, but for now this is just my rough outline of what I want to discuss!

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