Article Review Semantics

Review article about Semantics

A review by : Shelvira Elsa Dwita
Post by.        : Hillary Kiyagi at academia.edu
Pages.          : 3

The article give us the explanation about Semantics course,  such as

1. Definiton of Semantics

Semantics is best described as the learning of the meanings accorded to morphine’s, phrases, words, and sentences. The concept has for a long time been contentious to linguistics and philosophers and its intricacies to language i.e. the manner in which humans do construct meaning and how static those meaning really are. With semantics, it shows that the actual name is not of importance really, it is what that thing or concept represents that does matter.  For example, if a rose ceased to be referred to as a rose, its smell, the feel of its petals and the prick of its thorns will still remain with us.  Human communication will, therefore, become very changeling if different meanings will be given to specify vocabulary.  If some say orange in a place of a rose, then there will start to raise a lot of complications in communicating. Semantics is, therefore, the interpretation of the meaning of words, sentences structure and signs and it’s too large extent the determinant of how comprehension is made, the manner humans understand others and shape the decisions that are made as a result of these interpretations.
It is indeed the branch of linguistics that relates to language and how we perceive and understand the meaning. With this comes the complication of how meanings are made-up, the essence, the way it is shared across to others and how they change or transform with time. A distinction, therefore, has to be made between its figurative meaning and its literal meaning.

- The literal meaning is where the meaning is taken as it is i.e. at its face value e.g. when it’s stated that the season of fall commences with the variation of the leaves color. This means that the season begins to transform when the leaves turn their colors.
- Figurative meaning, the styles of metaphors and similes are employed so as to represent and convey greater emotions e.g. stating that I am as a fast a leopard is a simile as it compares how fast a person running is.  When children grow up, the learn by pointing with their chubby finger and state the name of whatever they are pointing to for example letter “A” for young toddlers trying to learn. These characteristics of pointing and naming remains part of the endearing characteristics of the rest of human life with especially in relation to discourse, power, hegemony and discrimination Indi duals have therefore been labeled as immigrants, where mass influx of refugees have stirred up sentiments of nationalism leading to even some countries creating barriers around themselves and favor nationalism over regionalism as is the case of Brexit as a means of controlling immigration. People identify themselves as British and foreign or migrant.  This shows that naming goes on the form the description of the immediate and concrete objects towards generations of even more abstract statements about events and occurrences. Another example relates to tourist in a new country where they go back to the strategy of the toddler of pointing and naming using gestures and expressions to replace verbs and sentences structures they are not familiar with.  This shows that the meaning of sentences does require the understanding of both the meaning of the specific word as well as the syntactic context in which the words are embedded in. this is because words can denote a core or literal meaning as well as bring about a radiance of associative meanings.

Closely related to semantics is the concept of pragmatics which is the study of how language is utilized and how the different uses of language determine semantics and syntactic. The principles and systems of lexical semantics have many applications as their study enables the speakers of a language to extend their knowledge of its stocks of words through advancing its dictionaries.  To understand what is being said is greatly shaped and influenced by the individual and cultural assumptions plus experience. These are indeed less visible in comparison to the actual words being explicitly being stated and factoring all this in what is being said improves awareness leading to more effective communications. This leads to more understanding and appreciation of the complexity and expressive elegance of a particular language and the human nature of the linguistic communication. Context, therefore, becomes very important as it helps to understand more than what a person is actually speaking. 

For example, when the American presidential contender, Donald Trump stated that all Muslims should be temporarily be banned from entering America, many people were out outraged by his remarks. Yet what he meant was that he would actually outlaw immigration of people from regions of the world that have a history of terrorism from entering the United States. He was proposing a review of the United States counter-terrorism policy which to him he viewed as essential to the protection of the peace and security of women and gays in the wake of the Orlando terror attack. 

EVALUATION

This article it's good for a student who want to learn about semantics.  Because from the definition not use difficult words.  The article tell us about literal and figurative meaning in general. 

But, this article so long there are several sentence that not too important to written. Maybe it more better to the reader summarize this article to be short. the systematic of writing this article not really good, like there is no paragraph. it makes readers get bored easily.
And the writer not explain more about kinds of figurative meaning like description in detail or example about this. And the last in the part example there are theorist that i still confused.