Overheard outside of the "English for Engineers" class, while people were
waiting for it to start, presumably discussing the about-to-be-turned-in
draft of a group paper: "I just made a few semantic changes, to make the
sentences flow better"" Apparently, altering the fundamental meaning of
sentences is fine, so long as you sound good when you are done.
'Semantic' is right up there with 'ironic' as one of the most poorly used
words in the English language. It's really much worse though, because while
ironic has only expanded to include a lot more than it originally meant,
semantic is used almost exclusively as the exact opposite of its actual
meaning—in fact, if people knew they were doing it, they would be
being ironic (but that in itself is not ironic, it's just kind of
funny).
Of course, it's almost certainly the fault of the phrase "arguing
semantics", which is a phrase that almost no-one who uses it actually
understands. Being curious about language, I often wonder how thing like that
happen. All I can think is that it was used to dismiss people who were trying
to twist things by claiming that some word or another didn't really stand for
its obvious meaning. So, if I say "I like blue better than red", and
you say, "Yes, but what do you mean by blue? Do you prefer the
shorter wavelength of the light? Do you like things that absorb blue light
better, or things that reflect blue light?" then you are just arguing
semantics; you are arguing about the meaning of the word blue, when you know
full well that all I'm saying is that, given the choice between a blue shirt and
a red shirt, I'll take the blue one.
But of course, people just hear it used dismissively, so they infer that it
means arguing about things that aren't important, and then assume that
semantics are the piddly details that don't matter. And so, as a result, many
people think that syntax and semantics are the same thing, instead of
fundamental opposites.
But, since it is used incorrectly so often, the issue of how it
should be used is, in the end, a
moot point
Category: Language
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