Semantics

It's difficult, sometimes, to have spent five years and a lot of money studying something you can't even discuss with most people you meet. When people ask me what I studied in school, I usually say something like "Linguistics, but also cinema and Shakespeare" so that their next response is something more along the lines of "Oh! Movies! I like movies" or "Oh, Shakespeare! I've read Shakespeare" and less along the lines of "Linguistics, eh? How many languages do you speak?" Which is always the question that irks me, because we don't learn languages in linguistics, we learn about languages, and... and... the answer is two, dammit. Two.¹

Anyway, to my point. In Linguistics, we study language and communication. We take classes like pragmatics and phonology. And no, pragmatics is not about politics or law, and no, it's phonology not phrenology and I have never analyzed a skull in my life. Now, while pragmatics and phonology are both really interesting topics², if I whip them out in conversation (yeah, I said it: I "whip out" linguistics facts), no one ever has any idea what the hell I'm talking about. It just makes me feel goofy. Yet I have to protect these words -- my beautiful, important words that make up language. Protect and mutilate. It's a love-hate relationship. But... Some things you just don't touch.

Take into consideration the word semantics. People don't seem to realize that semantics is a study, rather than a part of a popular figure of speech. I hear it all the time (used incorrectly) and the whole thing is so ironic I want to slap myself in the face. Example: Exchange I had with a coworker the other day. I was mentioning a vendor's post-facto complaint about an invoice, and my coworker said: "That reminds me of a word I like: Semantics."

I, in my constant quest to justify my B.A., immediately responded, "The invoice situation has nothing to do with semantics."

"Yes it does, he is arguing about something irrelevant."

"But, but..." And I tried to think about how to not sound goofy, "But semantics is about the relationship between meanings and words. It has nothing to do with whether it's irrelevant or not."

"No, I mean like when people argue semantics, you know. Like, argue about things that don't matter."

"That's not what semantics is. We're arguing about semantics right now, see, but the other thing--"

"Right, we're arguing about something that doesn't matter."

Ah! "No, we're arguing about the meaning of the word 'semantics!'"

"Right, and it's irrelevant!"

Then I exploded. After jumping out of the window. Well, that's what I did in the brief fantasy I constructed in order to avoid doing it in reality. Semantics isn't... it's... it... Let's just drop it and never bring it up again.

Moral of the story, in the anticlimactic genre: If you say something and you mean something different, don't argue that it's semantics. Technically, if you want to make an argument, you should be arguing pragmatics.

But that's all semantics.

Until then, look it up on the internet!



<sup>1. Well, one and a half.
2. Really. I'm not just saying that while simultaneously stuffing down the tiny, tiny voice yelling about the money and time I spent in school versus the amount of good it has done for me in my real life. Really.</sup>