Semantics Assignment

1.     Symbol

The present paper is the summary of my views on imaginative symbols in the aspects of their semantic structure and conceptual transpositions in them. As was defined in one of my earlier works, symbol is a multi-notion conventional sign which represents, apart from its inherent and immediate designatum, an essentially different, usually more abstract designatum, connected with the former by a logical link. (Shelestiuk 1997: 125)[i] In semantic terms, in symbols we deal with a hierarchy of meanings, where the direct meaning constitutes the first layer of sense and serves as a basis for the indirect (secondary) meaning - the second layer of sense, both of them united under the same designator (a name, a visual image, a significant object or person, etc.)

In (Shelestiuk 1997) I discussed the indispensable characteristics of symbols, which are, in fact, the complex structure of a symbol and the equally important status of meanings in it. Other important, if not indispensable, features of symbols are: imaginativeness; motivation; immanent polysemy; archetypal nature; integration into the structure of secondary semiotic systems and universality in various cultures. I will not dwell here on each of these features, but regard some of them as I outline the essentials of the theory of symbols.

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Later I came to the discovery of ‘illogical’ types of links between concepts in symbols, i. e. some conventional and accidental neuropsychic relations (see the part of this work concerning irrational symbols).

There may be more than one secondary concept associated with the immediate designatum in symbol. This feature is termed immanent polysemy in (Shelestiuk 1997); Philip Wheelwright (1968: 220) seems to mean the same when he speaks of ambiguity and vagueness of symbols. Immanent polysemy of a symbol means its innumerable implications: a cluster of conceptually disparate meanings related to a symbol (for example, fire – hearth and home; masculine principle; passion; the sun; purification); a circle of equonymous meanings (fire – purification – funeral pyre, purgatory, Gehenna); or a sense perspective - a chain of meanings, where, as the thought moves away from the direct meaning, links of abstract metaphors / metonymies may be followed by links of their concrete realization in other domains (fire - vigor - masculine principle - fertilization; fire – passion - heart; fire - the sun – God - spirit).

Among symbols I specify language and speech symbols. Language symbols are fixed in people’s mind as stable associative complexes, existing in the lexical meaning of a word as ‘a symbolic aura’, i. e. a number of semes of cultural-stereotype and archetypal or mythological character. Cultural-stereotype symbols are contemporary and comprehensible for all the representatives of a culture, with a transparent logical connection between a direct and a secondary meaning, the latter being easily deducible. Archetypal symbols, consistent with K. G. Jung’s archetypes, are symbols based on the most ancient or primary ideas of the ambient world. In archetypes the connection between the direct and secondary meaning is often darkened.

Examples of cultural stereotypes: e.g. rose – beauty, love; wall – obstacle, restriction of freedom, estrangement; mountain – spiritual elevation, also courage associated with overcoming difficulties; way – movement in time, progress, course of life. Examples of archetypes: the sky – father; the earth – mother; egg - primordial embryo, out of which the world developed; snake - god of the underground world, of the dead; bird – mediator between the earth and the heaven, this world and the other world; tree (of life), mountain (of life) – the world itself. For example symbol:

2. References

The reference of a word is the relation between the linguistic expression and the entity in the real world to which it refers. In contrast to reference, sense is defined as its relations to other expressions in the language system. Thus, there are words that have a sense, but no referents in the real world. Other words may differ in sense, but not necessarily in reference, and vice versa. The class of entities to which an expression can be applied is usually called its extension. Consequently, the referent of a word is always a member of the class of entities that constitutes its extension. The word's intension, on the other hand, is defined as the set of semantic properties which define it. The term denotation (that is also frequently used in the sense of an extensional reference) refers to the constant, abstract, and basic meaning of a linguistic expression. Secondary meanings or associations the expression evokes are called connotations. 

References:
http://www.ello.uos.de/field.php/Semantics/Referenceandsense


Shelestiuk, Helen V. Semantics of Symbol // Semiotica. Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. Vol. 144-1/4, 2003. Pp. 233-259.