One of the earliest issues in cognitive ethology concerns about the meaning of animal signals. This chapter takes a new look at this debate in the light of recent developments in the philosophy of language under the heading of "neo-expressivism" (Bar-On). It provides three approaches to the study of animal communication: an approach that emphasizes its affective function, an approach that emphasizes its referential function, and an approach that combines both. The chapter presents four "conceptualist" principles characterized by Gunther: compositionality; cognitive significance; reference determinacy; and force independence. It discusses the application of these four principles of conceptuality to animal communication. If the issue for understanding non-human animal communication were that of truth-evaluability alone, perhaps either a conceptualist or non-conceptualist account would be appropriate, even non-conceptual content (NCC) can be true or false. The chapter concludes by proposing some future directions that continuation of the discussion might take.