Semantics

Semantics

Words and Meanings

Resource No: 7

N.B. The tasks included in this presentation relate to John Siddique’s poem, The Sea. The poem has been

included at various points during the presentation, and can also be downloaded from the main resource bank of Blackpool and The Fylde College’s English Department’s webpage. All copyrights remain the property of the poet.

This resource covers the following topics:

Denotation and Connotation (Slides 3-8)

Semantic fields (Slides 9-18)

Hypernyms and Hyponyms (Slides 189– 21)

Synonyms and Antonyms (Slides 22- 25)

Figurative Language: Metaphor, Simile, Personification, (Slides 26-35)

Collocations (Slides 36- 39)

Topic summary (Slides 40-41

Semantics is quite simply the study of meaning.

At the most basic level of meaning, we look at words in termsof denotation and connotation.

.

Denotation is the most straightforward meaning of a word – the dictionary definition

Money (noun) a medium of exchange that functions as legal tender...

Whereas connotations are the associations and emotions that surround a word

Substitute, money’ for any of these words and consider the different connotations

Capital

- acquired through business

Remeber! Connotations can be negative or positive depending on individual or cultural viewpoints

Task 1: Connotation

This task should help you to recognise how the connotations of words support and contribute to the overall meaning of texts.

Examine stanza three of Siddique’s poem The Sea , found on the following slide. Here you will notice the inclusion of the proper noun, Sentantii.

In relation to the word Sentantii, respond to these three questions:

1) What are the connotations surrounding the word Sentantiii? 2) How did you arrive at these conclusions?3) Do the connotations of this word contribute to, or support the overall

meaning of the poem in any way?

Don’t worry if you don’t know what the word means, think more about what it might suggest.

Tip! It might be useful to consider the influence of the words and phrases immediately surrounding Sentantii.

The Sea

We have always come here.Always come to where the skylowers its head and lays its bodydown. We do the same- come to lay our burdens down,in the air, the sunlight that findsits way each day,

the spray and the plume,the hush and the rhythm of the sea.

Once this place was only a black poolof water rising through the marshesdrunk for its peatiness.

Once this place was only knownto the Setantii, first of the Sandgrown.

Everyone is born somewhere.The black pool in Layton.

We come to take the air,become Sandgrown’unsas the town grows.BLACKPOOL- We don not know youwe do not see you as we passthrough to our pleasures.Anchorsholme, Hoo Hill, Revoe

Land of windmills, bread-basketof Northern England.

You came in and out with tides- the wakes weeks, become the town,the air, the sand, the pier planks,the promenade, the arteries of roadsand pathways,

people grown from the sand.

No matter who we are,drinker or dancer, candifloss child,pleasure seeker or Sandgrown’un,the sea stops us sometimes.

As if our names,the real names

we call ourselvesare being whisperedin the washing back of the waves,in the pull against the beach.Seven small waves then the larger swell,cycling through tide after tide.We each come for our own reasons,it knows who we are. Even here. Amongst the rides and the illuminations,on the estates and in the houses,the pubs and the car parks.We just are who we are.The sea knows how we speak to ourselves.

Task 1 findings: Connotation

1) What are the connotations surrounding the word Sentantii ?

Sentantii has historical and exotic connotations.

2) How did you arrive at these conclusions?

Sentantii creates mystery by its unusual structure, ending with ‘ii’, suggesting it is not a wordof Anglo-Saxon origin, and in turn connotating exoticism. The historical connotations of theword arise mainly from the sentence in which it appears: ‘Once this place was known only/ tothe Sentantii, first of the Sandgrown’. The phrase ‘Once this place’ associates the Sentantiiwith the past, and being the ‘first of the Sandgrown’ suggests an ancient culture.

3) Do the connotations of this word contribute to, or support the overall meaning of thepoem in any way?

The historical connotations Sentanii holds contributes to the overall tone of the poem, whichis a blend nostalgia and contemplation. The sense of ancient history connoted by the wordcan also be related to the theme of cultural identity.

Remember! Given the connotations of words are emotionally or culturally defined, it is likelyyour answer will vary. If this is the case, make sure you are able to justify your findings byreferring closely to the text.

We also look at words in terms of their semantic field - sometimes referred to as lexical field

This is because we view words with related meanings or uses as being in the same ‘field’

Notice these are not words that can necessarily be substituted for one another – the field contains a vocabulary of words with associations to one another

money

bank

shares

transaction

wealthpoverty

deficit

loan shark

Semantic Fields

Look at this semantic field for ‘war’ – notice how words and phrases can be grouped together by either negative or positive connotations, or depending on cultural view-point

WAR

atrocity

war hero

honour

cowardice

war criminal

bravery

mass destruction surgical strike

attackdefend

victory

defeat

weapons arms

stabilise the areainvade

collateral damage

civilian deaths

Task 2: Semantic Fields

This task should help you to recognise words and phrases intexts that share the same semantic field.

Look at Siddique’s poem on the next slide, given the title, there is quiteobviously a semantic field relating to the sea. You will probably also noticethe inclusion of words such as promenade, which can be related to thebroader semantic field of the seaside.

With this in mind, pick out as many words as possible relating to theseaside.

Tip! It may be useful to think of the emotional and cultural associationswords have, such as candyfloss, as well as a words physical associations,such as tide.

The Sea













Compare your

findings on the next

slide

Seaside

sand

plume

spray

pier

promenade

sea

candyfloss

pool

waves

wakes weeks

Back

swell

tide

pleasure seeker

Sandgrown

Notice how words such as swell, waves and plume are physical attributes associated with the seashore, whereas, phrases such as Wakes Weeks and pleasure seeker are culturally defined associations.

The semantic field of seaside contributes to the cohesiveness of the poem’s overall structure, although in terms of stylistic analysis, this isn’t particularly illuminating – it only really confirms what we already know from the title. This poem is about ‘The Sea’.

Therefore, it is useful to bear in mind a text can contain several different semantic fields, all contributing to meaning in different ways.

Task 2 findings: Semantic Fields

This task should help you to understand how words sharing the same semantic field, contribute to the overall meaning of a text.

Look again at The Sea on the next slide and have a go at identifying any other patterns of words that may be related in meaning.

Tip! Think about the context, audience and purpose of the poem, and any major themes.

Task 3: Identifying semantic fields to analyse meaning.

The Sea













Compare your

findings on the next

two slides.

The Sea













In this poem, you may have noticed there is a semantic field relating to ‘identity’

This is apparent because their are lots of personal pronouns and labels for different people, as well as references to ‘name’ and ‘who we are’

You may have also noticed, even the sky and the sea have been given a human identity.

The Sea













Perhaps you also noticed a semantic field of ‘place’ –lot’s of names of places and references to places people live.

Now for the nyms!

So, semantic fields are a way of grouping words together interms of a shared vocabulary, but we are able to groupwords together in terms of meaning in other ways.

A hypernym, also known as a superordinate is a word that represents lots of other words, such as ‘flower’:

Flower

All the words that come under the word flower: rose, daffodil, bluebell...etc. are known as hyponyms

Insect

Ant Grasshopper Fly Spider

Tarantula Black

WidowMoney Spider

House Spider

Ladybird

NB: The suffix - onym means name or wordThe prefix hyper- means above, overThe prefix hypo- means below

So,

As you can see with ‘spider’ in the above example, a wordcan be a hypernym in one context, and a hyponym inanother. But how do writers use hypernyms and hyponymsto their advantage?

Well, writers use hyponyms as a way of rephrasing things toavoid repetition, elaborate, build tension or form linksbetween sentences. For example, Siddique has used thehypernym town in The Sea as well as the hyponym Blackpool.

Ready for more nyms?

More nyms!

Synonyms are words that are similar in meaning – ‘cash’, ‘bread’ and ‘capital’ are all synonyms for ‘money’. These are words that can be substituted for one another, and the words we would look up in a thesaurus.

Stop

Start

Antonyms are words whose meanings are opposite

Task 4: Synonyms

This task should help you to recognise how synonyms are used to contribute to the meaning of texts

Look again to Siddique’s poem on the next slide. Apart fromthe word town, can you find any words or phrases in The Sea,which have been used as synonyms for Blackpool?

Seek to find out how Siddique’s choices of synonyms forBlackpool can be related to the overall meaning of the text.

The Sea













Compare findings on

the next slide

How can the poet’s choice of synonyms

for Blackpool, be

related to the overall meaning of

the text?

Task 4 findings: Synonyms

In stanza two we finds a synonym for Blackpool, ‘Once thisplace was only a black pool’, this foregrounds the historicaland cultural background of the town, as do two othersynonymous phrases found in stanza six, ‘Land of windmills,bread-basket of Northern England’. In turn these phrasessupport the tone of nostalgia.

Agree? If your findings differ, can you back them up by makingclose references to the text?

So, now lets look a little further into how meaning is made by looking at figurative language.

Literal language is word for word –

‘You are making rapid progress’

Figurative language involves ‘figures of speech’-

‘You are coming on leaps and bounds’

Figurative language is the blanket term used to encompassterms and concepts related to comparative language.

At its most basic level, when we use figurative language wedescribe something in terms of something else – we make acomparison. Consider the following:

‘She is as fierce as a shark in business’‘She is like a shark in business’

Here, we have direct comparison between something, ‘she’and something else, ‘shark’.

When t a direct comparison,is made between things, usually by including the words, ‘like’ or ‘as’, we call this a simile

When we take that comparison one step further to say something issomething else, we call this a metaphor.

‘She is a business shark’

The metaphor tells us that in her business practice, the subject ‘she’,shares the same qualities as a shark : predatory, fierce, ruthless.

Metaphors can be harder to detect than similes as they do not always use the word ‘is’:

‘I jumped into a pool of sharks at that meeting’

Another reason metaphors can be difficult to detect isbecause they are so ingrained in our everyday language.Consider the following statement:

‘I was at a cross-roads in my life, so I decided to take theplunge and pursue a new career, even though I knewfinancially I would be skating on thin ice for a while ’.

All the phrases highlighted in red are metaphors, but they areso familiar to us, we hardly realise we are using them – we nolonger have to search for meaning. As such, the aboveexamples are what we term dead metaphors (or you mighthear them referred to as clichés).

METAPHORR.I.P

Also under the blanket term of figurative language we haveidiom. Idioms started out as metaphors, then became deadmetaphors or clichés through overuse and eventually becameidioms. This is when the original metaphor has gone beyondour realm of experience but has become so embedded in ourlanguage, speakers of the same speech community have noproblem interpreting meaning:

‘It’s raining cats and dogs’

‘We had a field day at the clothes sale’

‘He lost face during the argument’

Can you imagine what a nightmare getting to grips (anotherone) with idiom learners of English as a second language musthave!

So, how can our knowledge of figurative language help withour analysis?

Earlier on in the topic we looked at the semantic field ofidentity in The Sea where we discovered the two entities. ‘thesky’ and ‘the sea’ and been personified. This technique is aspecial kind of metaphor where non-human things are givenhuman attributes.

We have always come here.Always come to where the skylowers its head and lays its bodydown. We do the same...

Stanza 1

...The sea knows how we speak to ourselves.

Stanza 9

This kind of metaphor is known as a personification.

Task 5: Personification

This task should help you to recognise how figurativelanguage can be used to contribute to the meaning of texts.

Refer to Siddique’s poem on the next slide. How haspersonification of the sea and the sky been used add to theoverall meaning?

The Sea




Once this place was only knownto the Setantii, first of the sandgrown.









Compare your

findings on the

next slide

How is personification used to add to

the overall meaning of

the text?

Task 5 findings: Personification

In this case we could say the use of personification in TheSea supports the emerging theme of identity by giving twonon-human entities, human attributes. It brings the poem toa close and addresses the identity theme by suggesting that,‘No matter who we are...The Sea knows how we speak toourselves’. This in turn adds to the mysteriousness of thesea, and enhances the contemplative tone of the text.

Agree? If your findings differ, are you able to back them upby making close references to the text?

In addition to figurative language, when we look at themeanings of words we also consider their collocations.Collocations are pairs, or groups of words that we associatetogether:

Fish and... chips!

Left and... right

We call these kind of word associations common collocations, although it worth remembering some words have more than one common collocation

Right and... wrong

Task 6: Collocations

This task should help you to identify how collocations can beused to add to the meaning of texts.

As we discovered earlier, in stanza six of The Sea, one of thesynonyms for Blackpool is the phrase, ‘Land of windmills’. Isthere anything interesting we could say about this in terms ofcommon collocations?

Refer to Siddique’s poem in the following slide.

The Sea




Once this place was only knownto the Setantii, first of the sandgrown.









Compare your

findings on the

next slide

Is there anything interesting we

could say about the phrase ‘Land of windmills’ in

terms of common collocations?

Task 6 findings: Collocations

Although there are lots of common collocations for the firstpart of the phrase, ‘Land of...’, such as ‘land of nod’, or ‘land ofthe lost’, this phrase echoes the collocation ‘Land of Hope andGlory’, which is of course a song associated with Britishpatriotism. This is the case because in the next line we find,‘bread basket/of Northern England’, which conceptually links‘Land of...’ and ‘England’. In turn this adds to the theme ofidentity – in this case cultural identity and contributes to thetheme of nostalgia.

Agree? If your findings differ, can you back them up by makingclose references to the text?

Topic summary

So, in this topic we have looked at how meaning is made byexploring the dictionary meaning of words – denotation, and theemotional or cultural associations words carry through connotation.We have looked at semantic fields and how words can be groupedtogether through a shared vocabulary. We have also looked at howwords can be categorised as hypernyms which are words that canstand for lots of other words, such as ‘flower’, or words that comeunder these words known as hyponyms, such as ‘daffodil’. We thenwent on to examine synonyms which are words that can besubstituted for one another – the words we might find in athesaurus. We now know that antonyms are words that mean theopposite of each other.

Topic summary continued...

Finally in this topic we have looked at meaning through figurativelanguage, such as, simile, metaphor and personification, where wedescribe one thing in terms of another, and discussed deadmetaphors which eventually become idioms. Our last considerationwas collocation, another form of word association.

Now you are ready to look at the next resource in the series:

Documents

Semantics