Bedeutung is a German word usually translated as “reference” instead of “meaning“.
If we use the famous example of Gottlob Frege, dawn and vespers refer to the same meaning (Bedeutung), as both refer to the planet Venus but the two differ in their meaning.
The term meaning is a source of much confusion in semiotics and in many other fields of research (such as linguistics and philosophy). It is often used to denote both meaning and references to words, expressions, and statements, but also in a narrower sense, where it is used as meaning or content rather than reference.
