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SemanticsAnother word that many people hear but aren't always able to extract "meaning"* from is Semantics, however that's not a big problem as it is a rather simple concept to grasp.
Semantics is yet another branch of linguistics, however semantics deals with the meaning behind words, while being a rather simple concept to understand semantics, it is an essential in the study of Child Language Acquisition. In addition to just understanding the meanings behind words, Semantics also includes the study of how meaning is constructed, illustrated, interpreted, clarified, obscured, simplified, contradicted and paraphrased. One area of semantics which is incredibly important is denotation vs. connotation. Denotation simply means, the definition of a word as it would be read out of a dictionary, connotation on the other hand is rather the social or implied meaning of a word or phrase and is often linked to psychology because of the personal and emotional associations. Another very important area of Semantics is Ambiguity, ambiguity is when a phrase or sentence has more than one meaning, this can and has been troublesome for some newspapers and news headlines as they occasionally contain these ambiguities in them. Some examples of ambiguities are:
The first headline has no really negative connotations associated with as the flip side to the proper headline simply means that maybe Winston Churchill had his pants on backwards. However the second headline got The Guardian newspaper in a lot of trouble their seemingly innocent headline about Dr. Vivian Fuchs going on an exploration to Antarctica. Many people just seemed to miss read the headline and as a result the newspaper had to apologise for the headline. *After reading the passage you will understand this |