The semantics etc. Moscow correspondent, Barbara Partee, writes in with a tidbit found among the New York Times letters to the editor in the May 4, 2005 edition. In response to an April 29 column by Tom Friedman about American education falling behind, someone wrote in:
“I would limit the mandatory classes to a few core life skills: public speaking, self-defense, basic logic and semantics.”
Virtually all occurrences of the term “semantics” in public discourse concern some matter’s being an issue of “mere semantics”. This is meant to categorize the matter as insubstantial, as being overly concerned with the right choice of words, rather than with the content of what is at the stake. So, this is quite a departure from the ordinary.
Of course, nobody outside academic circles has any idea of what the science of semantics actually is.
But I think that given the popularity of your blog more and more People nowadays have a less vague idea of what Semantics mean. Don’t you think?
May 5th, 2005, at 2:52 pm #