Running head: THE SEMANTIC THEORY
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The Semantic theory:
The relationship between words and meanings
Ji-Young Lee
John Jay College
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Abstract
Semantic theory is a structure to specify the relationship between words and meanings. This means one word
or sentence can be varying with different occasions. In this present research, the researcher discusses the
relationship between words and sentences with experimental results. The researcher and co-researcher had
experiment on four participants, and the researchers asked them to answer certain questions, defining the
meaning of four pictures and four quotes on their own idea. After the experiment, the researcher analyzed the
data and discussed the relationship between words and meanings through semantic theory. The pictures and
quotes used for the experiment are listed on Methodology.
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Introduction
Semantic theory is a structure to specify the relationship between words and meanings. One word can be
defined as various ways depending on how it is used in a sentence. Likewise, there are a few ways in which
words or sentences can be semantically related. Then, what do we mean by ‘meaning’? In semantics,
‘meaning’ is defined as extension and intension. Extension is the thing in the world that the word/phrase refers
to; Intention is the concepts/mental images that the word/phrase evokes (The University of Sheffield, 2012).
Let’s have a close look into the word ‘mean’. The word ‘mean’ can be applied to two ways. It can be applied
to people who use language in roughly the sense of ‘intend’, and it can be applied to words and sentences in a
different sense, roughly expressed as ‘be equivalent to.’ Also, the same sentences are used by different
speakers on different occasions to mean different things. For example, if a tired traveler says, “This suitcase is
killing me,” it is not intended to be taken literally. It refers that he is tired from traveling around, and he is
getting more tired of carrying his suitcase. Thus, when people have the same sentences with different
occasions, there are two levels to analyze. They find why the sentence can’t be literally true and how the
speaker intends to communicate with the sentence. Thus, doing semantics is largely a matter of conceptual
analysis, exploring the nature of meaning in a careful and thoughtful way, using a wide range of examples,
many of which we can draw from our own knowledge (2007). The researchers carried out an experiment on
four participants from ENG 201. The experiment was asking certain questions to the participants on defining
quotes and explaining pictures. Each question the researchers asked in the experiment was spoken by a certain
people with a certain occasion. However, no one knows on what purpose they spoke the words. In this present
research, the researcher would like to discuss how the meaning can be interpreted in various ways through
each individual’s perspectives.
Methodology
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For the experiment on Semantics, the researcher and co-researcher planned to use 4 quotes and 4 pictures. The
researchers prepared a few pictures and quotes and then discussed to pick four of each. This experiment
portrayed how people interpret one thing differently. The researchers picked quotes that people could
understand with various perspectives. First quote was ‘Life is a zoo in a jungle.’ Second quote was ‘All Bibles
are man-made.’ Third quote was ‘It takes two to mango.’ And last quote was ‘Sit on the fence.’ For pictures,
the researchers found optical illusion pictures to see which one occurs in each individual’s sight at first and
what one sees in the picture. The researchers recruited four participants to ask the questions: Pamela, Michael,
Mayra, and Tom. The researchers randomly chose the participants within ENG201 class. Two of the
participants were male and the other two were female. Their age was in between 17 and 19. The participants
had only a maximum of 5 minutes to see and explain the meaning of quotes and pictures because the
researchers wanted to observe the first thing occurs in their mind when they look at the pictures and read the
quotes. The one quote the researcher was especially interested to see the result was 2nd quote, “All Bibles are
man-made.” It’s because each participant might have different interpretation depending on they are a Christian
or not. The researcher tried to find four possible different answers on each question. The co-researcher
recorded what the participants were saying on papers, and the researcher recorded their words through the
phone.
Results
Each of four participants had different interpretation on the same question. For the 1st quote, 'Life is a zoo in a
jungle.’ Pamela and Mayra interpreted it in a very similar way. They both said that life is crazy and there is
always ups and down. But, Michael interpreted that zoo is a certain sheltered places and thought that the quote
is talking about zoo-environment. Tom interpreted the quote as zoo is a cage figure and said that Jungle seems
like a freedom place, however, actually it is not. For the 2nd quote, 'All Bibles are man-made,' Pamela said
Bible is of what people think, and it's kind of storytelling. Mayra said, 'It is written by people, and it is about
their opinion.' However, Michael and Tom said differently. Michael said, 'The Bible is divinely inspired. There
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is a higher being is involved.' Tom said, 'No one knows the truth about God. Because God never says anything
what he said was just interpretation written by human.' For the 3rd quote, 'It takes two to tango,' Pamela and
Michael said we need a partner to dance tango with. And the other two participants said that there is always
something can't be done alone. For the last quote, 'Sit on the fence,' Pamela said, 'it reflects on the thing I've
done and makes me think can I do better to improve myself.' Mayra said, 'Sit fence before you do something.'
Michael said it means do not participate in something and stay out for a while. Tom said it means one can't
make decision. After the quotes, we showed them four pictures. With the 1st picture, Pamela said she feels
loneliness, black and white, frustration. Mayra said she sees balcony. Michael said she sees people and chess
pieces and feels like there is two meaning. Tom said it seems like a staircase. For 2nd picture, Pamela said its
formal orange juice and she feels hungry. Michael said, ‘the amount is same, and one is orange juice and the
other is frozen orange juice.’ Mayra and Tom said those are half filled and half empty. For 3rd picture, Pamela
said she feels death, bird is alone, and leave represents a partner who passed away. Michael and Mayra said
they see two birds; one is a real bird, but the other is made of leaves. Tom said the picture represents things can
seem like other things. For the last picture, Pamela said they look each other and see their youth. Michael said
he sees old people looking at each other and also sees the smaller people. Mayra said she sees a guy with a
guitar and paint of two people. Tom said the old people look like they are picking someone to live the rest of
life with. Therefore, on each question, everyone had a different answer. The researcher noticed that each
individual viewed and defined things with different aspects such as color, shape, appearance, and beliefs.
Discussion
The study indicated that meanings can be defined diversely. No matter what was the purpose of words or
sentences of the speaker or writer, meanings can be different. At the experiment, there were two male and two
female participants, and each one of them gave a unique answer on the same question. As the researcher
analyzed their answers, there were a few interesting things. First, meanings might reflect the participants’
psychological characteristics. For example, on the 1st quote, Pamela and Mayra said, 'Life is crazy, and there is
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always ups and down.' And Michael said he thinks zoo is a sheltered place in a jungle-wild. On the other hand,
Tom interpreted zoo as a cage. He said he would not feel freedom in zoo in a jungle. Three of participants
interpreted the thing in a positive way, and the other interpreted the thing in a negative way. But, all of the
participants interpreted the meaning by using ‘life’. The researcher found out that the meanings are related to
the environment too. Second, they interpreted the thing within their beliefs. The researchers showed the
participants 2nd quote, 'All Bibles are man-made.' The researcher chose the quote with a religious word, God,
to find out if the meaning can be interpreted with their own beliefs. And the results showed exactly what the
researcher expected. Michael and Tom are Christians and therefore, they put 'God' into their explanation and
emphasized God as a ruler of everything, while Mayra and Pamela did not mention any 'god' figure. Third,
when the researchers showed them the 1st picture, some interpreted the meaning as it shows outwardly while
the others tried to find deep meaning of it. The first thing the four participants saw was different. Pamela
focused on color and interpreted that she feels loneliness inside of color of the picture. Mayra said she sees
balcony. Michael said he sees both chess pieces and man figures. And Tom said he sees a staircase. Everyone
interpreted it differently and this indicates that each individual has their own perspectives to describe a thing.
Last, when the researchers showed them the third picture, some interpreted with its appearance like color or
shape, while others used their imagination and found the implicit meaning. Pamela said she feels death, and
she said one bird seems sad because a bird figure of leaves represents a partner who passed away. Michael and
Myra said they see two birds; one is a real bird, but the other is made of leaves. And Tom said the picture
represents things can seem like other things. As the researcher re-read how they answered on each questions,
the researcher is assured that each individual has his or her own characteristic colors. And that is the reason
why the meaning can be interpreted differently, and semantics is important. With this experiment, the
researcher realized that semantics cannot be easily defined as the meaning can be clarified by individual’s
perspectives. And as a lot of meaning could be existed in words or pictures, understanding semantics is
difficult but is very important. Today’s semanticists have been discovered modern techniques such as symbolic
logic or new grammar theories. However, semantics may be still too vague and elusive to many students in
semantics. But semantics will continue to be developed and therefore many students will be learning in
describing meanings, or theorizing a general meaning in depth.
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References
Kuhns, R. (1972). Semantics for Literary Languages. In New Literary History (Vol. 4, pp. 91-105). The
Johns Hopkins University Press.
The University of Sheffield. (n.d.). What is semantics? Retrieved January 10, 2015, from
https://sites.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/all-about-linguistics/branches/semantics/what-issemantics
Hurford, J., Heasley, B., & Smith, M. (2007). About Semantics. In Basic Ideas in Semantics (2nd Ed.).
Cambridge University Publisher.
Addendum
Quotes:
1st quote: Life is a zoo in a jungle
2nd quote: All Bibles are man-made
3rd quote: It takes two to tango
4th quote: Sit on the fence
Visual images:
Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4