Semantic knowledge includes general knowledge of things such as basic facts, knowledge of people, and meanings. Semantics are almost always taken for granted because it is an innate element of human beings. Meaning-making and meaning-sharing is a natural part of our day to day discourse. The meanings that people attach to words, objects, and even people are highly subjective(Hornsby, Stanley, 2005). The meanings that we have for the things around us speaks highly of our experiences, personality, and beliefs. The practicality of semantics is also what makes it a difficult topic to study. It is difficult to study because it is the very reason why we communicate. We converse and talk to people to convey “what we mean” about certain things.
Meaning-making and Shared Meanings
In order to establish understanding, people need to communicate with each other. Communication is one thing, but effective communication is another. In order to pass an accurate message and avoid confusions that may lead to misunderstandings, one needs to communicate what s/he exactly means. In the study of communication theory, specifically the socio-psychological tradition, meanings are very important. Communication theory sees semantics as a study of meaning making. This entails that meanings are literally in people.(Patterson, Nestor, & Rogers, 2007). How people perceive things are strongly anchored upon the meanings that they attach to these things. The society’s collective form of semantics can be stated in the form of stereotypes (Contreras, Banaji, & Mitchell, 2011). The meanings that people attach not only to words but also to the things around them may be affected by how the majority of the society views the subject. For instance, most parents would automatically pick blue colored things for the child. This is because the society have created the stereotype that the color blue is for boys, and pink is for girls.
One circumstance that can be observe to see semantics in action, is by going to another community that one does not belong to. This is because the people who belong to the same community, whether it be geographical or by interest, have shared meanings with one another. Different communities have different meanings attached to things. Sharing meanings with other people requires a long time and exposure. This could only be achieved through the use of ethnography. Ethnography is the process of immersing oneself with the purpose to come up with an in depth description of every practices of a certain community (Hoey, 2016). This requires a long time of immersion, because in order for an outsider to build shared meaning with people from a community, s/he must be able to identify himself first with the members of the community.
Losing and Reviving Semantic Knowledge
It is necessary that a person is able to convey what s/he really means, or what his/her actions really mean. It is not enough to assume the meanings of other people’s words. This can create barriers, and eventually damage relationships (Griffin, 2015).
Though obtaining meanings are innate to humans, there is a need to still continuously refresh one’s semantic memory. This is because an individual may acquire diseases that might affect his/her semantic memory. One example of these diseases is Semantic Dementia. Semantic Dementia is a neurodegenerative disease that dwells in the Fronto-temporal Dementia spectrum of the human brain, and is characterized by the decline in the expressive and receptive vocabulary of an individual(Patterson, et al., 2007). Fortunately, with recent developments in technology, there are now ways to retrieve semantic knowledge. X-ray images have shown that the left interior frontal gyrus (IFG) of the human brain can perform the retrieval of lost or deteriorated semantic knowledge. (Thompson-Schill, D’Esposito, Aguirre, & Farah, 1997)
References
Contreras, J., Banaji, M. R., & Mitchell, J. P. (2011). Dissociable neural correlates of stereotypes and other forms of semantic knowledge. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Retrieved April 24, 2016, from https://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/09/09/scan.nsr053.full.
Griffin, E., Ledbetter, A., & Sparks, G. (2015). A First Look at Communication Theory (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill.
Hoey, B. A. (n.d.). What is Ethnography. Retrieved April 24, 2016, from http://brianhoey.com/research/ethnography/
Hornsby, J., & Stanley, J. (2005). Semantic Knowledge and Practical Knowledge (Vol. 79). II— Jason Stanley. Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume. Retrieved April 24, 2016, fromhttp://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/wittgenstein/files/2007/10/Hornsby- SemanticKPracticalK.pdf
Patterson, K., Nestor, P. J., & Rogers, T. T. (2007). Where do You Know What You Know? The Representation of Semantic Knowledge in the Human Brain. Nature Reviews,8, 976-987. Retrieved April 24, 2016, from http://ling.umd.edu/~ellenlau/courses/ling646/Patterson_2007.pdf
