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Chapter at a Glance

making meaning

Semantics: Making Meaning Semantic Deviance

Lexical semantics
Meaning Classiications: Semantic
with Words Features
Meaning Subclassiications:
Semantic Fields
Key concepts meaning relationships: the nyms
Opposite Meanings: Antonymy
• Words have arbitrary meanings that we can express in terms of Similar Meanings: Synonymy
Meaning Categories: Hyponymy
semantic features.
Related Meanings: Polysemy
• Word meanings are also constructed through a variety of relation- Different Meanings: Homonymy
ships, which we refer to here as the nyms. Many Meanings: Lexical Ambiguity
• Word meanings change over time; meanings broaden and narrow meaning change: semantic shift
and sometimes become more positive or more negative. making new meanings: figurative
• Words have many nonliteral, or igurative, meanings, which are Language
Connecting Meanings: Metaphor
often quite complex and abstract, but we understand and use Comparing Meanings: Simile
them effortlessly in speech and writing every day. Idioms
• The various ways in which we construct meaning out of words summary
tells us something about how we think and about how we sources and resources
understand the world. review, Practice, and Explore

Did You Know . . . ?

Can Something Be Very Dead?
Hearing Colors
Language Alive! Is the Team Playing? Are the Team Playing?
Shifts in Meaning: Progress or Decay?
Linguistics in the News Talking Right . . . and Left
Accent on Linguistics and Computers

291
292 • chapter 9 Semantics: Making Meaning with Words

I
n this chapter, we will explore our unconscious knowledge of the
semantics of words and the system of rules that underlies this knowledge.
Understanding and creating meaning out of words is not a simple matter
but rather involves a complex system of linguistic rules that interact with
other grammatical systems, including syntax, phonology, and morphology.
semantics system Semantics is the study of how we construct and understand the mean-
of rules underlying ings of words and groups of words (clauses, sentences, etc.). Our complex
our knowledge of
word and sentence
knowledge of word meaning encompasses a wide range of phenomena and
meaning overlaps with other fields of study, including philosophy (in particular,
logic) and mathematics (algebra and set theory), and it is central to the
study of literature, humor, gender, politics, advertising, and law.
We will see in this chapter that meaning can in fact be meaningless
and that meanings can deviate from expected meaning but still be mean-
ingful. how can that be? a good starting point for the discussion of word
meaning is, in fact, to discuss what it means for a word or sentence to be
meaningless.

Making Meaning
We have seen in other chapters that even sentences made up of nonsense
words have some kind of meaning. consider this sentence:
She yarped that canzos spleeked the batoids.
We can tell that whatever the canzos are, they are doing something to the
batoids, and whoever she is, she’s yarping about that. We know that there
is more than one canzo, more than one batoid, and that the yarping and
spleeking happened in the past. all this information comes from the syntax
and morphology of the words in the sentence. We therefore derive some
meaning from this sentence even though we don’t know what any of the
words really mean.
Speakers would also probably conclude that the following sentence (in-
vented by Noam chomsky to illustrate the semantic phenomenon we are
discussing here) is english but, again, is odd:
colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
english speakers know that there is something deviant about this sentence
and also something completely grammatical about it. this sentence is well
formed in terms of syntax and morphology but odd because the meanings of
the words don’t it together.
294 • chapter 9 Semantics: Making Meaning with Words

poetry is often based on deviations from expected meanings as well, as this

poem by Shel Silverstein (1981) shows:
What Did?
What did the carrot say to the wheat?
“ ‘Lettuce’ rest, I’m feeling ‘beet.’ ”
What did the paper say to the pen?
“I feel quite all ‘write,’ my friend.”
What did the teapot say to the chalk?
Nothing, you silly . . . teapots can’t talk! (Light in the Attic, p. 16)
these deviations from expected meaning, whether expressed in slips of the
tongue or child speech or designed for comic efect, all illustrate not only
the complexity of meaning but also that our understanding of semantics in-
rPE 9.1 cludes knowledge of both meaning and anomaly.

Lexical Semantics
In the ancient Western world, a central question about language was
whether it is natural (not under human control) or conventional (under
human control). In plato’s Cratylus, Socrates, cratylus, and hermogenes
argue at length over whether names of things are chosen by individuals,
communities, or some higher “reality” outside human control. In the Bi-
ble, God charges adam with naming all things, and in this way meanings
are assigned to words. Such approaches to word meanings, however, as-
sume a monoglot (single-language) view of the world and do not take into
account evidence from other languages. From such evidence, we ind that
the connection between a word and its meaning is arbitrary: there is no
intrinsic reason why the word dog best represents the meaning we attach
to it. In French, this animal is a chien; in German, a Hund; and in Japanese,
an inu. this arbitrariness is relected not only across languages but also
within a particular language; a speaker from alabama might put things
in a poke, but a speaker from Montana would use the term sack, and a
speaker from Wisconsin, bag.
Nevertheless, there is a class of words for which the connection be-
tween sound and meaning is nonarbitrary—namely, onomatopoeic words
(onomatopoeia is Greek for ‘name making’), words that sound like their
meanings. these words are also called echoic words.
buzz, clang, splash, purr, kapow, boom
moo, cock-a-doodle-do, oink oink
though there are some interesting similarities among onomatopoeic words
across cultures (cows in turkish, Greek, albanian, estonian, French, hebrew,
 Lexical Semantics • 295

and english all say something very much like moo), much cross-cultural
variation in onomatopoeia still exists. In albanian, a horse says hihi hi but in
Finnish, ii-hahahaa; in Korean, hi-hing; and in hindi, hin hin hin. In english,
horses neigh and whinny. though a portuguese rooster says cocorococo, a
russian one says ku-ka-re-ku, and a thai one says ake-e-
ake-ake. Onomatopoeia nevertheless is a useful way to
use sound to suggest meaning, and many authors invoke
onomatopoeia for just this purpose.
Jose Elias da Liva Neto/Shutterstock.com

hear the sledges with the bells-

Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
how they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!

From “the Bells” by edgar allen poe

the pronunciation of onomatopoeic words can provide
clues to their meanings (so poe uses tinkle here instead of clang to suggest a
light, merry sound), though this relationship between sound and meaning
is still somewhat arbitrary. We can gather other clues about meaning from
the morphology of a word and also from its syntactic position. We also use
etymological clues to unlock meaning—we draw on our knowledge of the
origins of words and of cognates: words that have common ancestors such as
Hund in German and hound in english. (We discuss cognates in more detail
in chapter 11.) Context also provides important clues to meaning, and we
draw on our knowledge of the world and our experience to unlock meanings
of words we don’t know (meaning constructed from context is discussed in
rPE 9.2 the next chapter).
Suppose, for example, that you hear the following sentence, and you
don’t know the meaning of the word defenestrated.
about to be caught in the act, the burglars defenestrated the jewelry.
even if you don’t already know what defenestrated means, you can pick up
some clues from morphology and syntax. You know that the word is a verb
because of its position, and you know that it is in the past tense because of
the -ed inlectional suix. Its -ate derivational suix also tells you this word
is probably a verb. You might also igure out that it means to not fenestrate
in some way because of the negative preix de-, which you might recognize
as similar in meaning to the de- in declaw and deforestation. Some of you
may infer that defenestrate has something to do with windows, based on
etymological information: you may know that ‘window’ in French is fenêtre,
and you might also be familiar with the cognate words Fenster in German or
fenestra in Latin. context can also help us determine the meaning of a word.
For example, the following sentences includes more information about what
296 • chapter 9 Semantics: Making Meaning with Words

happens when one defenestrates, helping us infer that defenestrate means ‘to
fall out of a window’.
about to be caught in the act, the burglars defenestrated the
jewelry.
the heavy sack fell two stories and landed on the lawn, spilling its
contents into the bushes.
Your knowledge of the world tells you that in order for something to fall
two stories, it must fall from a building, and it would typically fall out of
lexical semantics a window or perhaps of a balcony. the reference to a lawn suggests the
formal study of the burglars are in a house. thus, you may conclude that defenestrate means ‘to
conventions of word throw from a window’, which would be correct.
meaning
So, sometimes we make meaning out of words we don’t know, using
various clues and strategies and a variety of semantic rules. the formal
rPE 9.3 study of the conventions of word meaning is called lexical semantics.
300 • chapter 9 Semantics: Making Meaning with Words

semantic ields
basic classiications Meaning Subclassiications: Semantic Fields
of meaning under
which words are
another thing we know about word meaning is that words can be divided
stored in our mental into semantic categories called semantic ields. Semantic ields are classi-
lexicons (FRIENDS, for ications of words associated by their meanings. there is a great deal of ev-
example)
idence that words are stored in semantic ields in our mental dictionaries.
Semantic ields could be clothing, parts of the body, emotions, old
boyfriends; the ields may vary across speakers, and words may belong to
more than one category. the meaning of the word pig in the semantic ield
farm animals overlaps the meaning in the semantic ield meat and even
(possibly) pets.
Slips of the tongue provide interesting evidence for semantic ields. the
word substituted for the intended word in the following slips of the tongue
 Meaning relationships: the Nyms • 301

rPE 9.6

Meaning Relationships: The Nyms

part of knowing the meaning of a word includes knowing the semantic rela-
nyms meaning tions among words. these same relationships, which we’ll call nyms, exist
relationships among across languages.
words—antonyms,
synonyms,
homonyms, etc.
Opposite Meanings: Antonymy
We all learn, early on, that rich is the opposite of poor, awake is the opposite
antonyms words of asleep, and teacher is the opposite of student. these opposites, or antonyms,
that we think of as seem based on fact: if you are rich, you can’t be poor; if you are awake, you
opposites, though can’t be asleep; and in class, the “opposite” roles of teacher and student
oppositions may be
relational (doctor/ seem well deined and obvious. (If you ask someone what the opposite of
patient), comple- pepper is, they’ll probably say salt.) Nevertheless, there are important difer-
mentary (alive/ ences among these pairs. Some antonyms are gradable; that is, the antonyms
dead), or gradable
(hot/cold)
are two ends on a scale, and there can be various gradations of each term.
So, what is considered rich or poor varies from person to person.
What rich means to tevye in the musical Fiddler on the Roof as he sings “If
I Were a rich Man” is quite diferent from what rich means to Donald trump;
for someone who used to weigh 300 pounds, weighing 200 pounds might
302 • chapter 9 Semantics: Making Meaning with Words

Table 9.1 Antonym Types

Gradable Converse Complementary

smart/stupid teacher/student dead/alive

often/rarely friend/enemy before/after

fat/thin question/answer permit/prohibit

most/least doctor/patient precede/follow

up/down mother/father send/receive

tall/short parent/child beginning/end

rich/poor lawyer/client day/night

be thin, but not everyone would share this interpretation. these

antonyms therefore express degree in various ways: by compara-
tive and superlative morphology (smarter, thinner) or syntactically
Some words can have two
(more gigantic, extremely minuscule). Complementary antonyms are
diametrically opposed
meanings: cleave can mean another subtype of antonymy: if you are one, you cannot be the
either to adhere closely or to other; these are “absolute” opposites. that is, if you are dead, you
divide. Look up some other cannot also be alive; if you are asleep, you are not awake, and so
“contra-nyms”: sanction, on. Similar pairs of this sort include legal/illegal and beginning /
oversight, moot.
end. Converse antonyms are a third type;these are pairs in which
rPE 9.7 each member describes a relationship to the other : teacher /
student, father/mother, lawyer/client, doctor/patient. all
rPE 9.8 languages have antonyms as well as these subtypes of
antonyms. (See table 9.1.)
Did You Know...?

can something Be Very Dead?

Although it may seem obvious that dead and alive and other antonyms
are complementary, it doesn’t mean we always use them that way. We
say such things as “Downtown is completely dead by 8 p.m.” and “That plant is
quite dead” and “She’s really pregnant,” where we modify dead and pregnant with
degree words even though these adjectives by deinition should not be modii-
able (because you either are or aren’t dead or pregnant). We also say very unique,
a phrase that rubs many language purists the wrong way but which is never-
theless quite common even among the most educated speakers. Our colleague
Eric Hyman explains such examples as morphosyntax “outranking” meaning—
adjectives can always take degree words precisely because they are adjectives. Our
unconscious knowledge of lexical categories allows us to use degree words with
adjectives regardless of prescriptive, meaning-based edicts.
 Meaning relationships: the Nyms • 303

Similar Meanings: Synonymy

synonyms words Words that are diferent in form but similar in meaning are called synonyms.
that have similar Synonyms are derived from a variety of sources, and we make choices
meanings (purse/ among synonyms for a variety of reasons.
handbag)
One source of synonyms is dialectal variation. In some dialects of North
american english, a long, upholstered seat is called a couch, but speakers
of another dialect call the same piece of furniture a sofa. canadian english
speakers might call this item a chesterield, and still other speakers might
call it a divan. though these words all mean the same thing and are there-
fore synonyms, they tend to be dialect speciic and may not be shared across
dialect boundaries.
Synonyms can also cross dialect boundaries; most North american eng-
lish speakers are familiar with the synonyms professor/instructor, doctor/phy-
sician, and lawyer/attorney. Still other synonyms arise as a result of language
change over time. For example, your grandparents might use a particular
term that seems old fashioned to you, and you might use a more modern
term. For example, what might be a pocketbook for your grand-
mother is called in current fashion circles a handbag or a bag
or a purse. an older term for dress is frock, and what used to be
called a baby carriage or perambulator is now a stroller or jogger;
Isn’t it fun when antonyms
come to be synonyms? Bad
we are less likely now to refer to women as gals.
is bad and it’s good. It’s bad two other, closely related sources for synonyms are style
to be sick, but sick can mean and register. In casual speech, a speaker might say, “that’s
‘good’. a nice ride,” but in more formal speech, “that’s a nice car.”
For a variety of historical reasons (discussed elsewhere in this
book), we attach social value and prestige to words with Latin or Greek
roots. We therefore might choose a Latinate synonym over its native eng-
lish (anglo-Saxon) counterpart in formal, academic writing. table 9.2
shows some pairs of synonyms or at least close synonyms. (exact syn-
rPE 9.9 onyms are quite rare.)

Euphemisms
english has a vast number of synonyms, more than most languages, largely
because of borrowing from other languages, especially French and Latin.
though synonymy allows for a variety of ways to express ideas, it can also
euphemism word be the source of euphemisms. euphemisms are words and phrases used to
or phrase used to avoid ofending (by directly addressing taboo subjects) or to deliberately
avoid offending obscure actual (usually unpleasant) meanings. Government terminology
or to purposely
obscure (collateral provides a good source of examples. Area denial munitions are ‘landmines’,
damage for ‘civilian and physical persuasion means ‘torture’. Operational exhaustion means ‘shell
deaths’) shock’, and wet work is ‘assassination’. We use euphemisms to avoid talking
about bodily functions: sweat can be replaced by perspire, genitalia by
privates, and urinate by go to the bathroom. Still another source of synonyms
304 • chapter 9 Semantics: Making Meaning with Words

Table 9.2 Synonyms of Anglo-Saxon and Latin/Greek Origin

Anglo-Saxon Origin Latin/Greek Origin

land alight

try attempt

hard dificult

talk (about) discuss

crazy insane

ghost spirit

clean sanitary

dirt soil

go advance

see visualize

holy sacred

space cosmos

heavenly celestial

is politically correct language, terminology speciically intended to limit use

of certain terms in favor of more socially and culturally acceptable ones
in public discussion. common examples include Native American for Indian,
ireighter for ireman, diferently abled rather than disabled or handicapped,
and mail carrier rather than mailman. the use of politically correct language
can be the source of some controversy because politically correct terms can
be—not surprisingly—political, which raises questions about the accuracy
rPE 9.10 of their meanings and the implications of those meanings.

Meaning Categories: Hyponymy

hyponym word
whose meaning another word-meaning relationship is hyponymy. a hyponym is a word
is included, or whose meaning is included, or entailed, in the meaning of a more general
entailed, in the word. For example, thoroughbred is a hyponym of horse, and house is a
meaning of a more
general word (tulip/ hyponym of building. a hyponym can itself have hyponyms, as shown in this
lower) diagram:
 Meaning relationships: the Nyms • 305

bovine

cow elk antelope deer

Guernsey Holstein Hereford

the entailments expressed by hyponymy can be illustrated as follows:

Guernseys are cows.
Bossie is a Guernsey.
Bossie is a cow.
hyponymy expresses how we assign meaning to larger categories and to
smaller categories included in these larger ones. We use hyponymy in lan-
guage to make general statements more speciic:
What are you reading?
rPE 9.11 a book/a russian novel/War and Peace

Related Meanings: Polysemy

polysemy refers Words that are polysemous have two or more related meanings (Greek
to words with two poly ‘many’, semy ‘meanings’). For example, lip is polysemous because we
or more related can use it not only to refer to a part of one’s mouth but also in phrases
meanings (lip = of
a cliff or part of the such as lip of the clif or the lip of a cup, and we also have the expression
mouth) don’t give me any lip. We call a furry, burrowing animal a mole, and mole
can also refer to a spy who pretends to be a legitimate member of the
group on which he or she is spying. Foot is polysemous as well: in addition
to meaning ‘the lowest part of the body’ (with the top being the head), we
have foot/head of the bed, as well as foot of the stairs and foot of the moun-
tain. Body parts are often polysemous; we use leg to refer to the leg of a
chair and the leg of a table, arm to refer to the arm of a chair, and eye to
refer to the eye of a storm. We return to a discussion of polysemy in the
retronym new section on igurative language; most polysemy makes use of igurative, or
word or phrase
created to nonliteral, meanings.
distinguish an another meaning relationship, which can perhaps also be considered a
original word from type of polysemy since the two terms have related meanings, is also called
a more recent
meaning of the
a retronym. a retronym is a new word, compound word, or phrase created
word (analog watch/ to distinguish an original word from a more recent meaning of the word:
digital watch) for example, analog watch to distinguish from digital watch, acoustic guitar to
distinguish from the newer electric guitar, or ilm camera to distinguish from
rPE 9.12 digital camera.
306 • chapter 9 Semantics: Making Meaning with Words

homonyms words Different Meanings: Homonymy

with the same
sound and spelling Words that sound the same but have diferent (unrelated) meanings are
but different, called homonyms (Greek homeos ‘same’, onoma ‘name’). the verb bear can
unrelated meanings
mean ‘to have children’ or ‘to tolerate’. So, She can’t bear children is am-
(saw/saw)
biguous because bear is a homonym. Homophones do not necessarily share
homophones the same spelling (sole/soul, gorilla/guerilla, to/too/two), but they sound the
words that do not same; heteronyms have diferent meanings, the same spelling, but difer-
share the same spell-
ings or meanings ent pronunciations (the bow of a ship versus a bow and arrow).
but sound the same
(sole/soul)
homonyms
heteronyms sound the same, same spelling
words that have cleave, bear, saw
the same spelling,
different meanings
, and different
pronunciations
(bow/bow) homophones heteronyms
sound the same, different spelling same spelling, sound different
sole/soul, gorilla/guerilla bow, wind, wound, abuse

rPE 9.13
308 • chapter 9 Semantics: Making Meaning with Words

rPE 9.14

Meaning Change: Semantic Shift

So far, we’ve talked about some of the meaning relationships among words.
semantic shift here, we turn to how word meanings (and thus their meaning relationships)
change in the
can change over time. these semantic shifts happen in a variety of (some-
meaning of words
over time times overlapping) ways. they can be shifts in connotation, or changes in
general meanings associated with a word. In Old english, the word Hund
shift in connotation meant ‘dog’, but in modern english, hound refers to a particular type of dog.
change in words’
general meanings this process is called narrowing. In Old english, gōme meant ‘jaw, palate, in-
over time side of the mouth’, but the meaning narrows in Middle english, in which gome
 Meaning change: Semantic Shift • 309

narrowing change means ‘gum’. In early Modern english, the word acorn, which formerly meant
in words’ meanings ‘fruits’, narrows to ‘fruit of an oak tree’, and courage, which meant ‘heart,
over time to more mind, disposition, nature, bravery, valor’, narrowed to ‘bravery, valor’.
speciic meanings
the Old english word dogge, on the other hand, referred to a particular
breed of dog and today refers to domestic canines in general, through a pro-
broadening cess called broadening. In Old english, bridd meant ‘young bird’, but the
change in words’ meaning of this term broadened in Middle english, and bird came to mean
meanings over time ‘fowl of any age’. (Note the phonological metathesis that occurred here, too:
to more general or
inclusive bridd → bird.) the word twist used to mean ‘twig, tendril, or branch’, but
after the seventeenth century, its meaning broadens to mean ‘the action of
twisting something’, and ‘anything that has been twisted’ (such as a slice of
lemon, a wire, yarn). Decimate, for the romans, meant ‘to kill every tenth
person’, but now its meaning has broadened to mean ‘destroy, utterly wipe
out, annihilate’.
amelioration shift Word meanings also undergo amelioration, a shift to a more positive
of words’ meanings connotation. the word croon, for example, which in english means ‘to sing
over time from softly’, comes from Dutch kronen, which means ‘to groan or lament’. Word
neutral or negative
to positive meanings can also undergo pejoration, shifting to a more negative con-
notation. the Old english word ceorl meant ‘peasant, freeman, layman’, but
pejoration shift of during Middle english degenerated in meaning; it occurs in present-Day
words’ meanings
over time from
english as churl, ‘a rude or ill-bred person’.
neutral or positive to Words can also shift in denotation, eventually shifting to mean some-
negative thing else entirely. For example, blush used to mean ‘look’ or ‘gaze’. In early
Modern english, this word came to mean ‘to redden in the face (from shame
shift in denotation
complete change or modesty)’. the term moody in Old english meant ‘brave’ and now means
in words’ meanings ‘given to changeable emotional states’. although the current meaning of a
over time word may not seem related at all to its original meaning, such shifts are
usually not arbitrary. the modern english word bead comes from the Old
english word gebed ‘prayer’. the shift in meaning here came from beads
threaded on a string to count prayers (a rosary), but without knowledge of
the word’s history, bead and prayer seem completely unrelated in meaning.
In the morphology chapter, we discussed how we bring new words into
the language through the morphological processes of coining, blending, com-
pounding, clipping, and so on. We are equally creative in assigning new mean-
ings to words or shifting meanings of words in the ways just outlined. Some
current innovations are bad for ‘good’ and sweet for ‘exceptional’. Awesome,
which used to mean ‘inspiring awe’ or ‘full of awe’, usually means in cur-
rent speech ‘remarkable, great, fantastic’. though shifts in meaning are inevi-
table, change can sometimes cause some confusion. For example, aggravate,
rPE 9.15 which originally meant ‘to worsen’, is often now used to mean ‘irritate’; anx-
ious, which meant ‘illed with anxiety’, is now used to mean ‘eager’. Because
rPE 9.16 these changes are not complete—and many people still have only the irst
meanings—confusion and lack of precision of meaning may result. When one
rPE 9.17 meaning truly takes over the other, the language changes.
310 • chapter 9 Semantics: Making Meaning with Words

Making New Meanings: Figurative Language

Often, particularly in discussions of literature, we talk about language being
igurative language igurative, or expressing nonliteral meanings, meanings that do not conform
nonliteral language; to the primary meaning of a word. primary meanings of words are listed
language that shifts irst in dictionary deinitions and are the most typical or common mean-
meaning from the
primary meaning of ings we associate with a word. and though we may think that the use of
the word igurative language is conined to stories and poems, in fact, most of our
everyday language use is nonliteral, from what we say in casual conversa-
tion to what we hear in a weather report on the news to political speeches.
We think of objective writing and speaking, conveying “just the facts,” as
less igurative than literary language. On some level, this might be true, but
as c. S. Lewis points out in his short treatise on language, Studies in Words
(1990), “By his metaphor [discussed in next section] the speaker is trying
to communicate what he believes to be a fact.” that is, we can still express
“facts” figuratively. When we say “he was madder than a hornet” or “I
bombed that test,” we are using nonliteral meanings of hornet and bombed.
and what about when we say “Why the long face?” We aren’t commenting
on the length of someone’s jaw but rather on their mood; and when we say
“I see what you mean,” we are using see to mean ‘to understand’ rather than
‘to perceive with the eye’.

shifts in meaning: Progress or Decay?

Though semantic shift is inevitable and very common, some language purists see it as
a kind of language decay. Two examples of shifts that are often thought of this way
are imply/infer and affect/effect. The verb imply traditionally meant ‘to suggest without
explicitly stating’, and infer meant ‘to arrive at a conclusion based on evidence.’ So,
when someone says, “We’d better go,” he or she is implying that it is time to leave.
If someone says, “I missed my bus,” you can infer that he or she did not get to the
bus stop on time. Due to their similarity in meaning, imply and infer are often used
interchangeably. And affect and effect? The verb affect (with stress on the second syl-
lable) traditionally meant ‘to inluence’, as in ‘The new process affects how we make
cheese.’ The verb effect means ‘to create’, as in ‘The new process will effect a change
in how we make cheese.’ The fact that these words are pronounced identically by
most speakers contributes to their tendency to be used interchangeably. Also, both
words can be nouns with different meanings, but we don’t mix these up as often as
we do the verbs, though we do often misspell them.
312 • chapter 9 Semantics: Making Meaning with Words

Connecting Meanings: Metaphor

perhaps the most recognizable use of igurative language is metaphor. a
metaphor, as aristotle conceived it and as we still understand it, is a igure
metaphor nonlit- of speech that sets up an analogy between two words or phrases: something is
eral meaning of something else. the word ultimately comes from the Greek metaphero, mean-
one word or phrase
describes another
ing ‘to carry over’ or ‘transfer.’
word or phrase (My as mentioned, Lakof and Johnson (1980) take the position that there
car is a lemon.) is no real distinction between metaphors and literal speech because meta-
phorical meanings actually relect our conceptual structures, how we view
the world. Lakof and Johnson also argue that these metaphorical concep-
tual structures inluence how we behave. Metaphor for Lakof and Johnson
is not a rhetorical device but rather a way of perceiving the world that is
woven throughout ordinary language. they provide examples of metaphors
such as the following to support this claim:
Time is money
we spend it, waste it, save it, don’t have it, invest it, budget

The word lemon, used to

it,
refer to a malfunctioning lose it
vehicle, narrowed in meaning
Argument as war
from the early 1900s slang
meaning of lemon: something your claims are indefensible
bad or undesirable or which
you attacked every weak point in my argument
fails to meet one’s expecta-
tions. It has now expanded your criticisms were right on target
again to mean any item that is I’ve never won an argument with you
unsatisfactory or defective.
you shot down all my arguments
to what extent, if at all, do you think such metaphors shape our perspective
and our behavior?

Types of Metaphors
dead metaphor Dead metaphors Dead metaphors are those that are so conventionalized
metaphor that is in everyday speech that we don’t even realize they are metaphors. Meta-
so common that it phors of sight provide some examples: I see your point. I’ll take a look at your
goes unnoticed as a
metaphor (I see your paper for you. He is blind to new ideas. these uses of see, look, and blind have
point.) nothing to do with visual perception; we use see as a synonym for under-
stand, blind to express intentional lack of understanding, and take a look to
mean ‘investigate’. (Lakof and Johnson argue that because these metaphors
are so commonly used, they are not really dead at all but very productive.)
 Making New Meanings: Figurative Language • 313

another example of a truly dead metaphor is broadcast, which began as a

metaphorical use of the casting of seeds broadly; today, it is not likely that
anyone makes a connection with the spreading of seed.
We do have to learn that these are dead, however, as evidenced by some
children’s use and understanding of these words. a child who overhears the
sentence He can be so blind sometimes! might ask, “Is he really blind?” and
one child, knowing that say means ‘to utter’, said about a sign: “the sign
wrote . . .” rather than “the sign said . . .” She had not yet learned the meta-
phorical meaning of say.

mixed metaphor Mixed metaphors Mixed metaphors are those in which parts of diferent
metaphor that metaphors are telescoped into one utterance. this mixing can occur for a
comprises parts of variety of reasons. the following examples were taken from the University
different metaphors:
hit the nail on the of Illinois at chicago website (http://tigger.uic.edu/~rramakri/readings/
jackpot combines hit Fun/Mixed-Metaphors.htm):
the nail on the head
and hit the jackpot She grabbed the bull by the horns, and ran with it.
I’ve hit the nail on the jackpot.
I’m shooting from the seat of my pants.
You’re pulling my leg over my eyes.
I’m lying by the edge of my seat.
Beware my friend . . . you are skating on hot water.
I would not trust him with a ten-foot pole.
We’re robbing peter to pay the piper.
I can see the carrot at the end of the tunnel.
We might come up with “hit the nail on the jackpot” because the two source
metaphors (“hit the nail on the head” and “hit the jackpot”) overlap in
meaning (‘to achieve a goal of some kind’) and/or because they both include
the verb hit. We might produce “lying by the edge of my seat” because
both “lying by the seat of my pants” and “on the edge of my seat” have re-
lated meanings (unplanned action that may include fear and anxiety) and/
rPE 9.18 or because both metaphors include the word seat.

personiication Personification Personification, another subtype of metaphorical

attribution of language, gives human attributes to something that is not human. (For some,
human qualities to there is overlap between personiication and anthropomorphism, but others
something that is
not human argue that anthropomorphism is more speciic, ascribing human qualities to
gods, while others believe anthropomorphism to be more general that just
language use; for example, ascribing human characteristics to nonhuman
form in art.)
the steeples swam in the mist.
the gates opened their arms.
the project ate up all my time.
the cold knocked me out.
314 • chapter 9 Semantics: Making Meaning with Words

the idea died a natural death.

his theory explained . . .
rPE 9.19 these facts suggest . . .

synesthesia Synesthesia Synesthesia is a type of metaphorical language in which

metaphori- one kind of sensation is described in terms of another (color is attributed to
cal language in sounds, odor to color, sound to odor, etc.). examples include “sweet” smells
which one kind
of sensation is (taste attributed to smell), “loud” colors (sound attributed to color), and so
described in terms on. In the following lines from charles Baudelaire’s poem “correspondances,”
of another; for “perfumes” (smells) are described in terms of touch, “fresh like the skin of in-
example, a smell
described as sweet
fants.” the sense of touch is described in terms of sound (“sweet like oboes”).
or a color as loud Finally, perfumes are described in terms of color (“green like prairies”).
there are perfumes fresh like the skin of infants
Sweet like oboes, green like prairies . . .

metonymy Metonymy another type of igurative speech is metonymy; we refer to

description of something by describing it in terms of something with which it is closely
something in terms associated. a well-known example of metonymy is The pen is mightier than
of something with
which it is closely the sword, in which pen refers to writing or diplomacy and sword to action or
associated: The war. additional examples are the following:
pen is mightier than
the sword (pen = The Pentagon/The White House/Congress issued a statement yesterday.
the written word/ The law is after her.
diplomacy, sword =
violence/force) We often use metonymy to create verbs from nouns.
they limousined to the prom last night.
We Taco Belled for lunch today.
Synecdoche is a speciic type of metonymy in which we use a part of some-
thing to refer to the whole thing. a physician may refer to a patient as the
tonsillectomy rather than the patient in 4B or Mary Jones. We may refer a car
as wheels or a ride.
head (of cattle), threads (clothing), skirt (woman), suit (man)
Sometimes synecdoche is more abstract:
Give me a hand = help
Lend me an ear = your attention
Two heads are better than one = cooperation
Synecdoche can also involve referring to something by manufacturer,
product, material, or color.
I like my Honda = producer for product
Natural ibers are all the rage these days = cotton clothes
Do you take plastic? = credit cards
 Making New Meanings: Figurative Language • 315

Did You Know...?

Hearing colors
Synesthesia (related to the Greek word for ‘sensation’) is more than
just a literary device; it is also a neurological phenomenon in which
stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involun-
tary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. For example, one
common form of synesthesia is grapheme S color synesthesia, in which letters
or numbers are perceived as inherently colored. Writer Patricia Lynne Duffy
reports, in her book Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens,

“One day,” I said to my father, “I realized that to make an ‘R’ all I had to do
was irst write a ‘P’ and then draw a line down from its loop. And I was so
surprised that I could turn a yellow letter into an orange letter just by add-
ing a line.”

Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov also had grapheme S color synesthesia, though
it was likely actually phoneme S color since when he writes “letter’” he means
phoneme because it’s aural.
Another form of synesthesia is music S color synesthesia, in which synesthetes
experience colors when they hear certain tones, timbres, or keys.
For more information
Duffy, P. 2001. Blue cats and chartreuse kittens. New York: Henry Holt.
Nabokov, V. 1966. Speak, memory: An autobiography revisited. New York:
Putnam.
van Campen, C. 2010. The hidden sense: Synesthesia in art and science.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Some theorists suggest that all language is metonymic since words stand for
things. (See Lakof 1987, for example.)

Comparing Meanings: Simile

simile comparison, Similes differ from metaphor and metonymy in that they involve a
usually of two unlike comparison of two unlike things and usually involve the words like or as.
things, in order to
create a nonliteral he eats like a pig.
image (run like a She’s big as a house.
deer)
We’re happy as clams.
My brain is like a sieve.
here are some famous similes:
Suspicion climbed all over her face, like a kitten, but not so
playfully. (raymond chandler)
316 • chapter 9 Semantics: Making Meaning with Words

exuding good will like a mortician’s convention in a plague year.

(Daniel Berrigan)
as good as gold. (charles Dickens)
Death hangs on her like an untimely frost. (William Shakespeare)
Solitude . . . is like Spanish moss which inally sufocates the tree it
hangs on. (anaïs Nin)
a woman without a man is like a ish without a bicycle. (attributed
to Gloria Steinem)
 Making New Meanings: Figurative Language • 317

Accent on Linguistics and Computers

garden path, so to speak.) How do we get a
machine to decode it to [The horse (who was)
raced past the barn] fell? To complicate it more,
Courtesy of Apple

there are sentences with the same syntactic

structure that are not ambiguous:

The horse ridden past the barn bucked.

How does one create a software program

Does your spell-checker save or confuse you?
that understands both the ambiguity of the
Does your grammar-checker help or hinder your
garden path sentence and the lack of ambiguity
writing? Does your speech-recognition software
of the second sentence, which has the same
make funny mistakes? Do you get frustrated or
syntactic structure? This is the kind of challenge
amazed by these computer programs? Well,
that draws many linguists into computational
have you ever wondered who invented and pro-
linguistics, the study of language and computers.
grammed them? Computational linguists have a
This ield is very broad and includes the following
major role here.
subields:
To program these computer features that
we use every day required development of • Natural language processing: Design
software that provides the computer with the software that (ideally) gives computers
grammatical rules of our language. Imagine the the capability to analyze, decode, and
complexity! For example, how do you program produce “natural” language.
a computer to recognize and understand • Machine translation: Design software
ambiguity? Consider these two sentences: that allows computers to translate from
They gave the monkeys the bananas because one language to another.
they were hungry. • Speech generation: Use computers to
program telephones, cars, elevators,
They gave the monkeys the bananas because GPSs, and games to produce speech
they were overripe. (and this involves getting intonation
They are syntactically identical, but they right!). Apple’s new Siri app (see photo)
crucially differ in who or what they refers to. And does all this and more!
this ambiguity is different from the one in the • Speech recognition: Use computers to
following “garden path” sentence: transform spoken language into written
language.
The horse raced past the barn fell. • Corpus linguistics: Use computers to
A garden path sentence is one that misleads study large collections of spoken or
us because we begin to decode (or parse) it one written language (a collection is a
way but then have to backtrack to decipher its corpus; plural corpora) statistically for
actual meaning. (We are led down the wrong frequency of patterns and so on.

(continued)