Semantic Analysis II

Today, we’re going to look at a selection of memes with a mind towards their specific semantics, using a different framework..

We’ll start off with a very basic (and relatively weak) semantic approach called componential analysis. To do this, we look at a word (or meme) and attempt to identify the semantic features, that is, elements of meaning, which are relevant and important for contrasting different words.

So, if we were trying a componential analysis of ‘walk’, ‘run’, ‘skip’, ‘sprint’, we might do something like:

walk = walk [-fast] [-skipped steps] [-short duration]

run = walk [+fast] [-skipped steps] [-short duration]

skip = walk [+fast] [+skipped steps] [-short duration]

sprint = walk [+fast] [-skipped steps] [+short duration]

This is absolutely an oversimplification, and the features you choose can be anything you’d like, of any level of complexity. But the goal here is to identify the relevant semantic features which tell us the meaning and which contrast the meaning of different words, and express them.

Once you’ve done that, to really force you to contemplate the meaning of the memes, we’ll take a look at two more robust approaches to meaning, and see how they relate.

For all parts of this assignment, you’ll make reference to the memes at the bottom of this document.

Task 1: Componential Analysis

With your group, look at each of the sets of items below, and…

1. Choose a group of features which would be useful or interesting for characterizing their meaning
2. Decide which feature values would help you distinguish and understand the differences between these memes
3. Ask yourself how well you feel like you’ve captured the semantic distinction here.

Importantly, focus on the overall meaning, rather than trying to do this for the individual words or the images. You do not need to include [+drake].

Task 2: Compositional Analysis

Now, you’ve got a rough understanding of what these memes mean, at a more specific level than the norm. Let’s look at them through the lens of compositionality. Compositional semantics takes the view that meaning is built from a combination of the meanings of the elements (words, morphemes, etc), and ‘grammatical knowledge’ which helps us stitch them together.

We touched on this already last week, but look at the sets below and…

1. How compositional is the meaning?
   • Can you identify which morpheme or element of the meme is contributing each semantic feature above?
2. How much of that meaning is iconic vs. arbitrary?
   • Do we know, for example, that this is ‘+sad’ only because the person in the meme looks sad?
   • Conversely, is there information about an image/template/font/otherwise which you need to already know to understand the meaning?
3. Are there other rules which help you understand the meaning?
   • What information do you have from your knowledge of memes?
   • What information do you have from your knowledge of how to read English, or manga, or…?

Task 3: Analysis by Analogy

Another ‘camp’ of semanticists find more value in thinking about analogy, and think of meaning as being derived by comparing a new word or sentence to existing words or sentences. These folks tend to use the terms ‘usage-based’ or ‘construction-based’ to describe their work.

So, when given a sentence whose meaning is unclear, “I blooped up my blerble, it’s so frustrating”, you’re able to compare it to other sentences you’ve heard (e.g. “I messed up my knitting, it’s so frustrating”) and derive a meaning. Similarly, within words, we might use our knowledge of existing words to figure out the meaning of new ones. Some elements of ‘Gaige unblattingly bought a bad car’ can be understood despite the undefined word because we’ve seen words that look like that (e.g. ‘unknowingly’, ‘unwantingly’).

We started the quarter in this vein, thinking about prototypes, and now we’ll see if this works here. With your group, contemplate:

1. Do you think you’re relying on your past experience with other memes or words to analyze these sets?

2. Can you think of specific other memes which ‘helped you understand’ this set? Perhaps with different wording or slightly different morphology?

Task 4: Discussion

With your group, discuss…

1. Which of the analyses we’ve done (Event-based, Pragmatic, Componential, Compositional, or Analogy-based) was easiest to do?

2. Which of these analyses seemed to best capture the meaning of memes, overall?

3. Were each of these analyses equivalent for all sets, or did one set favor one analysis in terms of ease or ability to capture the meaning?

If you finish these, you can try componential and compositional analysis for the memes we discussed in the last activity.

Sets for Analysis

Set 1

Analyze the following words: changed, unchanged, transformed, untransformed, evolved, unevolved

(You can just ignore the past tense)

Set 2

Set 3

Set 4

Please choose two memes from your own area of interest, and try the analysis.