§ 7. Method of Semantic Differential

All the methods of semantic analysis discussed above are aimed mainly or exclusively at the investigation of the denotational component of the lexical meaning.

The analysis of the differences of the connotational meaning is very hard since the nuances are often slight, difficult to grasp and do not yield themselves to objective investigation and verification.

An attempt to establish and display these differences was developed by a group of American psycholinguists. They set up a technique known as the semantic differential by means of which, as they claim, meaning can be measured. It is perfectly clear, however, that what semantic differential measures is not word-meaning in any of accepted senses of the term but the connotational component of meaning or to be more exact the emotive charge.

Their technique requires the subjects to judge a series of concepts with respect to a set of bipolar (antonymic) adjective scales. For example, a concept like horse is to be rated as to the degree to which it is good or bad, fast or slow, strong or weak, etc.

The meaning of the seven divisions is, taking as an example the first of the scales represented above, from left to right: extremely good, quite good, slightly good, neither good nor bad (or equally good and bad) slightly bad, quite bad, extremely bad.

In the diagram above horse is described as neither good nor bad, extremely fast, quite strong, slightly hard, equally happy and sad.

The responses of the subjects produce a semantic profile representing the emotive charge of the word.

The degree of agreement between the answers is treated as a significant and reliable factor.

It may be argued that the data with which they deal in these investigations are essentially subjective. Objectivity, however, concerns the role of the observer. In other words, each person records his own, entirely subjective reactions, but by the time the analysis has been completed the result will represent a kind of semantic average reached by purely objective statistical methods.

Practical tasks and exercises

1. Read and analyze the following extract on the basis of the above mentioned methods of linguistic analysis:

A barge is a flat-decked and usually flat-bottomed vessel. An empty barge rides high in the water, showing its draft marks, or waterline marks, on its side. As it is filled, the barge rides deeper and deeper in the water, and tonnage is estimated by reading the marks on the hull. Barges have no power to move on their own. They depend on tugboats, towboats, and water currents to move.

2. Take the English text of oil and gas field and analyze it according to the main principles of linguistic analysis.

Lecture 2. Semasiology

By definition Lexicology deals with words, word-forming morphemes (derivational affixes) and word-groups or phrases. All these linguistic units may be said to have meaning of some kind: they are all significant and therefore must be investigated both as to form and meaning. The branch of lexicology that is devoted to the study of meaning is known as Semasiology.

Semasiology is coming to the fore as the central problem of linguistic investigation of all levels of language structure.

Words, however, play such a crucial part in the structure of language that when we speak of semasiology without any qualification, we usually refer to the study of word-meaning proper, although it is in fact very common to explore the semantics of other elements, such as suffixes, prefixes, etc.

Meaning is one of the most controversial terms in the theory of language. The scientific definition of meaning however just as the definition of some other basic linguistic terms, such as word, sentence, etc., has been the issue of interminable discussions. Since there is no universally accepted definition of meaning we shall confine ourselves to a brief survey of the problem as it is viewed in modern linguistics both in our country and elsewhere.

WORD-MEANING