Semantics and Linguistics

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that language is a complex symbiosis of verbal and nonverbal cues used to convey information within and across cultures. The writer then discusses that the needs for economy, for familiarity and for personal expression have together had the effect of enabling individuals to achieve a diversity of meanings and linguistic expressive tendencies within the context of a shared communication framework such as a language or dialect. Next, the writer presents an exploration of the way in which meanings and expressions may change when they are removed from the printed page. The writer concludes that factors such as context, the nature of the relationship between the conversant partners and general social conventions within a culture play a determinant role in the way that individuals choose both the information they disclose and the manner in which they disclose it.

From the Paper:

"This speaks to our instinctual use and comprehension of words which are created by the processes of blending and clipping. Word economy is a common trait of informal linguistic communication and even the word choice more commonly used in the business setting today, where there is a high premium on conciseness but linguistic decisions that are simultaneously comprehensible to a common denominator of recipients.
"This suggests much about the way that we appear to almost naturally understand such words. Their adoption as a natural consequence of the desires inherent in the process of human communication illustrates that they are not necessarily spontaneously produced on a whim by one inflective user. Rather, we may more accurately understand that such terms are reflective of some inherent need within the language. Whether the need is to express a new range of ideas within the concise context of a single word, as seems often to motivate blending or to convey information about one's self by suggesting through word choice a certain loose, off-the-cuff informality, it is clear that there are both conscious and unconscious forces at play in our choice of word economy."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Palmer, Frank R. Semantics. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981.
• Yule, George. The Study of Language. 3rd ed. Cambridge : Cambridge UP, 2006.

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• Analytical Essay # 5807 : "Semantics and Cultural Analysis"
• Research Paper # 17017 : "Linguistics and the History of the English Language"
• Analytical Essay # 146713 : "Semantic Change and Meaninglessness"

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