While sometimes a word just has one meaning, there are many words in the English language that can be used in a variety of different circumstances. Consider all the ways that we can use the word “pitch”:

• He threw a curveball pitch.
• Tell me your elevator pitch.
• The soccer pitch is being used. 
• Your voice needs to hit a higher pitch on the first note.
• The roof of that building has a steep pitch.

In each of these sentences, the word pitch means something different: a baseball throw, a persuasive speech, a sports field, a sound frequency, and finally, an angle. Even though the five-letter word is identical across each of the sentences, it signifies something different, and thanks to the context provided by the other words in the sentence, we intuitively understand the meaning of the word pitch in each.

Semantics is a branch of linguistics that focuses on how our interpretation of words and phrases changes depending on context. Semantics focuses on both the meaning of individual words (lexical semantics) and the meaning of sentences and phrases (sentential semantics) to understand how words paired together express larger ideas. Semantics is particularly concerned with semantic properties, the inherent features of a word, to understand how we group words together. For example, the words “child,” “puppy,” and “kitten” all describe a younger version of a mammal, so we may group them together.¹

Lexical Semantics: A subfield of semantics focused on the meaning of individual words and the relationships between them. It explores how individual words have multiple meanings (like the many definitions of pitch), how words come to be grouped together through their meanings (such as “boat” and “ferry”), or what makes words synonyms (like “big” and “huge”).³ 

Sentential Semantics: A subfield of semantics that focuses on the meaning of sentences and phrases to explore how the combination of individual words leads to the formation of a complete idea. The way that words are structured in relation to one another can alter the interpretation of a sentence. For example, the sentence “Only Tom saw George” suggests that no one but Tom saw George. However, the sentence “Tom only saw George” suggests that Tom didn’t see any other people but George.⁴ 

Semantic Properties: Components of a word or sentence that contribute to and help define its meaning. For example, the words “doctor,” “uncle,” and “teacher” may be grouped together because they have the semantic property of  “person” in common.⁵ 

Sense: The inherent meaning of a word without the attribution of a particular instance. It is the mental concept we associate with the word. For example, the word “cat” has a sense that involves a four-legged animal with fur that meows.¹

Reference: The actual object or entity that a word refers to. For example, your friend’s specific cat that you are referring to in the sentence “That cat is so cute.”¹

French language historian Michel Bréal first used the word “semantics” in 1833 to propose a new field of study focused on the evolution of meaning in language.⁶ He was interested in how languages change as time passes and what rules may explain those changes.⁷ He proposed in his 1897 Essai de Semantique that the field of semantics explore “what causes words, once created and endowed with a certain meaning, are induced to restrict, to extend, to transfer this meaning from one order of ideas to another, to raise or to lower its dignity, in short to change it.” This essay helped establish semantics as a legitimate sub-branch of linguistics.⁷ 

After Bréal, interest in semantics grew quickly, especially in Europe. Scholars wanted to understand not just how word meanings changed over time, but also how meaning worked in language at any moment. In the early 20th century, Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure suggested that language be analyzed both synchronically (as it exists in a particular time) and diachronically (as it changes over time). He argued that language is a system of signs, where words evoke a mental concept. He suggested words unite a sound image and concept, which gives them their meaning.⁸ Saussure introduced the Saussurean model of linguistic signs, where signs are made up from a signifier, the physical form of the word (e.g. the letters that make up the word bird), and the signified, the mental concept that is conjured in the mind (e.g. the mental image of a yellow bird that you visualize).⁹

At the same time, American psychologist B. F. Skinner was taking a behaviorist approach to semantics, suggesting that the meaning of a word comes from the behaviors that cause someone to say it or the behavior that ensues when people hear it. This suggests that people learn language through rewards, punishments, and as reactions to the environment around us.  For example, if someone says “Ice cream truck!”, kids may run towards the truck, parents might grab their wallet, and someone who is lactose intolerant may ignore it altogether. The different behaviors suggest each person is interpreting the phrase differently—kids are thinking “yummy treat,” parents are thinking “expensive snack,” and the lactose-intolerant person is thinking “irrelevant to me.” However, Skinner’s behaviorist view of semantics was largely unpopular, as it focused solely on observable behavior and implied that words hold no objective meaning and can be interpreted differently for everyone.¹⁰

American professor Noam Chomsky challenged Skinner’s views in the late 20th century in his book “Verbal Behavior.” Chomsky believed that people have an innate ability to grasp the meaning of words, evidenced by the ability of children to flexibly combine words to create phrases and sentences that they’ve never heard before, suggesting that language is not simply a reaction to external stimuli. He introduced the concept of a language acquisition device, an inherent ability to acquire language and understand meaning (i.e., semantics!). Chomsky believed the language acquisition device is what separates humans from other animals, as it gives us a unique capacity for complex verbal communication.¹¹ 

Today, semantics is a major subfield of linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and even computer science, with the introduction of programming languages and natural language processing. Computer algorithms have to encode and combine semantics and syntax to process programming languages, interpreting meaning in constrained contexts. Artificial intelligence systems—like chatbots, translation tools, or voice assistants—need to understand not just the words people say, but the intentions behind them, making the study of semantics all the more important so that we can properly program these systems to think like humans do.⁶

Michel Bréal

A French language historian who coined the term semantics to describe the study of how word meanings change over time. Bréal is also responsible for the introduction of the marathon to the Olympic Games. While this may seem unrelated to his passion for linguistics, it was his love for how myths and stories preserve meaning over time that led to the idea. Inspired by the ancient Greek legend of a messenger, Pheidippides, who ran from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to inform everyone of Greece’s victory, Bréal proposed that including this event would evoke the glory of ancient Greece, inspiring athletes and spectators.¹² 

Ferdinand de Saussure

A Swiss linguist who is credited with many significant developments in linguistics and semantics, earning him the title of the founding father of modern linguistics. He expanded the field of semantics by studying not only how the meaning of words and phrases evolves, but also their meaning at any given time. Saussure also introduced the concept of language as a system of signs, with words linking their physical form (the signifier) to particular mental images (the signified). He believed that our shared language system, built upon rules and words everyone knows, makes it possible for people to speak and understand each other.⁹

B.F. Skinner

An American psychologist who studied semantics from a behaviorist perspective, suggesting that the meaning of words and phrases comes from our behavioral response to them. He believed that people acquire meaning from the rewards and punishments gained following their reaction to them. For example, if we ran after hearing someone shout “fire!” and that led to our safety, we would learn that the word means there is a sense of danger.¹⁰ Although Skinner’s semantic theories were largely unpopular, their basis of rewards and punishment driving behavior relates to our understanding of operant conditioning, which suggests humans and animals’ behavior is reinforced based on the positive and negative consequences of an action.¹³

Noam Chomsky

An American professor and linguist who changed the field of linguistics by suggesting that language, and our ability to process it, is biologically inherent and uniquely human. By observing that children often use words and phrases creatively in ways that they’ve never heard before, he suggested that humans have an innate language acquisition device that helps us deduce meaning. Chomsky became an important figure beyond just the field of linguistics, influencing philosophy, psychology, and politics with his exploration of how language shapes the way we think and how governments and media can use language to influence public opinion.¹¹

Without understanding the meaning behind words, communication would break down. Semantics shapes how we learn, interpret, and apply language in everyday life, law, and even artificial intelligence.

Helping People Learn & Communicate

At their core, words are just jumbled-up combinations of letters—their power is in the meaning we associate with them. If we didn’t have a deep understanding of the meaning contained in a word, we would be confused every time we heard it in a new context. For example, when you were a child, your mom may have pointed dogs out to you, saying, “Look at the dog! Did you hear the dog bark? Woof woof! Can you bark like a dog, too?” You would have come to understand that “bark” describes a sound that a dog makes, and when you later asked what the stuff on the outside of trees was called, you may have struggled at first to understand what dogs have to do with it. Eventually, we all come to implicitly understand an important aspect of semantics: that the words that are paired together in a sentence can give each individual word a different meaning.

Studying semantics improves our language comprehension and helps us communicate with one another. Let’s consider a child who says the phrase “I goed to school today.” If you understand the semantics behind “ed,” which usually indicates an action in the past tense, you might infer that the child is trying to convey “went.” The child has overregularized, or extended a regular grammatical rule to a word with an irregular form, but thanks to your understanding of semantics and the meaning behind particular word forms, you can still grasp the intended meaning.¹¹

Additionally, semantics allows us to understand meaning beyond the literal interpretation. Most commonly, sleep refers to a state of rest where the body and mind are relaxed. However, if someone says, “You have sleep in the corner of your eyes,” you understand they are not referring to that state existing in your eyes—they are referring to the crust that has accumulated in the corners. If we understand the inherent meaning of the word, we can still infer the meaning of a phrase even when a word is used in unexpected ways. For example, in the sentence, “Her boss is sleeping on these great ideas,” the boss is not literally sleeping—the intended meaning is that the boss is failing to recognize the worth of the ideas. While semantics helps us understand literal meanings, making sense of ambiguous or figurative language also requires pragmatics, which focuses on how context, like tone or setting, influences the interpretation of language.

Semantics in Law

​Semantics plays a crucial role in the legal field by influencing how laws are interpreted and applied. Lawyers will argue their interpretation of legal terms and phrases to support their viewpoint, while judges will use semantics to explain their decision-making. 

The 1892 Supreme Court case Church of the Holy Trinity v. The U.S. provides an example of why semantics are important in law. The United States claimed that the Church of the Holy Trinity had violated a federal law that forbade “any person, company, partnership, or corporation, to prepay the transportation of any alien into the United States under contract or agreement to perform labor or services of any kind in the United States,” when they arranged for a English citizen to come to New York to be a pastor for their religious society. Despite the fact that the words “of any kind” were used, the Supreme Court overturned the ruling. The judge stated that the law’s intention would not have been to punish the act of bringing a pastor to provide religious services, and that the words “labor or service” did not include the spiritual work of a pastor. The judge took a “spirit of the law” approach, looking beyond the literal meaning of the words and considering the intent and meaning behind it—that is to say, the contextual semantics.¹⁴ 

The Semantics of Artificial Intelligence

For artificially intelligent systems to comprehend speech or text like humans, they have to rely on semantics. Chatbots like ChatGPT rely on natural language processing, analyzing the meaning of words and phrases based on their surrounding context, rather than the meaning of each isolated word, to answer our queries.¹⁵ For example, if you ask an AI chatbot, “Can you give me a hand with this problem?” the computer knows that you’re not literally asking for it to give you a physical hand; you are asking for it to use reasoning and logic to help solve the problem. AI tools are able to understand what you mean because the models are trained on vast amounts of linguistic data, learning how words are normally combined in different situations. The model will have analyzed that often, when people use the phrase “Can you give me a hand,” they are asking for help.

Semantics isn’t everything, though—while AI systems can analyze phrases through a semantic lens to deduce the meaning behind your request, they aren’t always adept at understanding things that require a better grasp of pragmatics, like sarcasm. If it gives you a wrong answer and you say, “Wow, thanks. Super helpful,” it would likely be interpreted as a genuine expression of gratitude.

There are several ongoing debates in semantics, including how much the meaning of words matters, whether meaning is or should be context or culturally dependent, and what role intent plays in shaping meaning.

“It’s Just Semantics”

You may have heard the phrase “It’s just semantics,” which suggests that it is trivial to argue about the meaning of words. However, the words we use can have a significant impact on people’s beliefs and behaviors.¹⁶

For example, consider being asked if you are “pro-life.” It seems the average human would likely say yes, they support life. Now, consider being asked if you are “pro-choice.” Again, most people would say they support the ability to make choices. Yet, these two questions represent very different viewpoints. The first is used by people who oppose abortion, as it’s hard to argue against the value of life. However, people who believe in the right to abortion will use “pro-choice,” because it’s difficult to argue against the value of making autonomous decisions. This example shows that we often use semantics to frame issues in a way that shapes how people feel about them and influences their opinions.¹⁷

Semantic Relativism vs Universalism

In linguistics, there is a debate between semantic relativism, which argues that the meaning of words changes based on cultural, social, and individual contexts, and semantic universalism, which suggests there are universal meanings of words and phrases that transcend differences.¹⁷ Relativists believe that meaning is shaped by the context in which it is used, whereas universalists believe that language is shaped by inherent parts of human cognition that are universal. Additionally, relativists argue that people should be able to borrow words from any other culture and change their meaning, and that meaning can evolve over time, while universalists maintain that meaning should be retained when we borrow words to preserve clear communication.¹⁸ 

The Role of Intent

There is an ongoing debate about how much a speaker’s intent matters when determining the meaning of a phrase. The field of pragmatics takes a greater interest in the interactional context of language (the social situation in which it is uttered) and the implied meanings of speakers, whilst semantics studies the meaning of words and their relationship to one another without paying as much attention to context.¹⁹

 Defamation cases are an interesting place to see both sides of the debate. The 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger suggests that intent has a role in determining legal outcome. Zenger published an article that criticized the Royal Governor of New York and was being tried for seditious libel—publishing written material with the intent to create negative perceptions of the government. However, Zenger’s lawyer argued that his intent had not been malicious; it was simply to expose the truth about the governor, and the negative perceptions were outside of his control. Zenger won the case, suggesting that intent does matter when interpreting communication.²⁰

However, in other cases, intent is not considered. In Quebec, the law states that even if the person who wrote a defamatory statement does not intend to harm, if they interfere with the victim’s reputation, they can still be convicted because they acted carelessly. Ultimately, whether or not intent is considered important depends on the context, the interpretation of the law, and the framework through which meaning is analyzed.²¹

Semantics Supports English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Learners

When we first encounter a word in a foreign language, we don’t understand the meaning behind it—it’s just a sound to us. While memorizing what the word means can give us a rudimentary grasp of another language, semantics can help us truly acquire it. 

It’s often hard for English language teachers to effectively teach students, as it’s difficult to describe the connection between words and ideas. It seems like something we just know inherently, but if we dig a bit deeper and use semantics to teach people, we may see better success rates. Fatimah Khalid Alsayed, who works as part of the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia, wanted to see how semantics could support EFL learners. She designed a course focused on semantics for EFL students in Saudi Arabia, which taught students the basics of semantics, encouraged students to analyze semantic components in phrases, and used techniques like semantic mapping to visually represent the connection between words and concepts. 

To see how the semantic course impacted the students’ learning of English, Alsayed administered pre- and post-assessments that tested the students’ vocabulary and language proficiency. Alsayed found a significant improvement in their capabilities after the course, both in terms of vocabulary breadth (the number of known words) and depth (the understanding of words). Students also reported that the knowledge gained and semantic exercises had positively impacted their learning.²² 

The Framing Effect

Semantics argues that meaning is derived from more than just the literal interpretation of words and that the way that information is presented or structured can impact the meaning we infer and our subsequent behaviors. In a famous 1981 study, psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman showed that the way information is framed influences our decision-making, known as the framing effect.

In their study, Tversky and Kahneman asked people to decide between two treatment programs for 600 people who had contracted a disease. Group 1 was shown positive framing: Treatment A claimed that 200 people would be saved, whereas Treatment B claimed that there is a ⅓ probability that 600 people would be saved, but a ⅔ probability that no one would be saved. Group 2 saw negative framing: Treatment A would result in 400 lives being lost, whereas Treatment B stated that there was a ⅓ probability that no one would die and a ⅔ probability that 600 people would die. Both groups were essentially reading the same potential consequences, but the first saw it framed in terms of how many people would live, while the second group had the choice framed in terms of how many people would die.

Tversky and Kahneman found that in Group 1, 72% of the people supported Treatment A, but in Group 2, only 22% supported Treatment A. People were adverse to picking a treatment that was framed in a way that would lead to death. This suggested the way that semantics—specifically, the way language is framed—can influence human cognition, behavior, and judgment.²³

Cognitive Grammar

Cognitive linguistics is a field that argues that language is deeply connected to how we think. In this article, we explore a subset of cognitive linguistics—cognitive grammar—which rests on the theory that grammar and meaning are intertwined. It suggests that the way we use grammar reflects how we mentally organize information about the world, meaning that structure is a tool through which we share the meaning of a sentence with others. For example, we use the past tense to relay to someone that what we’re talking about has already happened.

Resolution 2020: To Proactively Streamline Utilization of Erudite Vocabulary

If you work in the corporate world, you’re likely familiar with phrases like “let’s circle back,” “paradigm shift,” or “low-hanging fruit,” despite the fact that you may have never heard these before starting your career. Often, people and corporations will use jargon in order to appear more intelligent. However, this may act as a barrier to understanding. In this article, our writer Preeti Kotamarthi explores why our association between large words and intelligence is misguided and why we should K.I.S.S. (Keep it Simple, Stupid!)

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