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Abstract The experiential view of meaning is shared by both cognitive and functional approaches to language studies. However, the former offers mainly a cognitive-psychological explanation of ex¬periential meaning, while the latter furnishes primarily a socio-cultural explanation. The cogni¬tive perspective on experiential meaning holds that meanings derive from the interaction be¬tween man and the world, which are construed as conceptual structures via human cognition and realized by linguistic representations. The functional perspective on experiential meaning regards experience as construal through meanings of linguistic choices, and the diversity of experience originates from the variety in the choice of linguistic resources. This study focuses on the two ex¬periential perspectives on meaning, explaining their integrated relations. It is argued that the cog¬nitive perspective on experiential meaning elaborates on the source of meaning, which is the ne¬cessity to the formation of semantic resources. The semantic resources which serve as the inven¬tory of experiential meaning in the functional perspective make the construal of experience through meaning possible. The semantic resources might in turn affect the individual' s construal and conceptualization of the experience between man and the world, thus leading to new concep¬tual structures.
Key words: experience; meaning; cognition; function
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