Semantics

Now that you all know I'm a linguist, I'm going to talk about semantics. I just thought of it because it occurred to me that in at least one of my posts, I'm giving too much information.


Semantics is the meaning of a sentence, basically...and there are at least two different ones for each sentence.
There's the literal meaning: "I have to be at work at 7 tomorrow."
And then there's the implicated meaning: "Do you want to stop for a drink?" "I have to be at work at 7 tomorrow."

As you can see, the context given to the second one gives it a lot of other meanings, such as:
"No." (Or at least "Even if I want to, I can't.")
"I have a good reason for saying no."
"The reason I'm saying no is unrelated to you."
And the very fact of having said that implicates:
"I WANT YOU TO KNOW that the reason I'm saying no is unrelated to you."
Which in turn adds the implicature of:
"I am not refusing because I hate you."
"I might be open to being invited by you to do the same thing at another time."

Context matters, basically. LONG STORY SHOT.

Even without such contexts, though, there are some things that speakers just KNOW about words. I'm talking only about native English speakers in these specific examples, by the way.
For instance: "I ate some of the cookies."
That technically just means "The number of cookies I ate was greater than zero.
While that doesn't technically mean I did not eat some of the cookies and then the rest of the cookies...it doesn't technically mean I didn't eat ALL of the cookies, if all of the cookies were gone, you'd still be looking for who ate the rest of the cookies after I was done. This implicature made by some (that it means "not all") is so strong that even in my class full of linguists who had been learning about semantic logic for half a semester already, there were plenty of people who argued with the teacher and told him that "some" meant "not all" as part of its DEFINITION. It doesn't, actually, but if you think it does, you're not alone. It's just that strong of an implication.

In fact, you'd assume that not only had I not eaten all of them, I hadn't even eaten MOST of them. This is called "Scalar Implicature" and is hard to explain. Let me just say that you assume I'm telling you EXACTLY as much as you need to know. NO MORE, NO LESS.


I try not to buy gemstones from people who don't label things that have been dyed as "dyed" (or "treated" or "color-enhanced" or whatever) but everybody likes to get an edge, and there are plenty of people who will label things as "natural" "untreated" "100% natural" and so on, but then simply neglect to put those tags on the dyed things...so while the dyed things are not labeled as dyed, they are tacitly labeled as "not natural color," and they probably consider that honest. Personally I think it's not really honest, considering that someone would only have that context if they looked at the person's other shop items that WERE their natural color. But it's so often done that it gets to the point of having to assume that if it doesn't mention it being "100% natural," there's a good chance that it's dyed. Implicature, man, so crazy.

(Mostly I just stick with those sellers that put "dyed" in the description and feel like I know what I'm buying, even if it IS dyed. I just don't want to pass on anything dishonest into my work and to my buyers. It doesn't really MATTER, usually...dyed things are pretty and in some cases prettier than natural because they went through the effort of looking like that, and I have bought and used dyed stones...but it makes me feel better.)

Reading the post on something I just sold today has just made me realize that I was giving too much information. I put, "These pictures have NOT been edited for color."

Which, I mean, was true. And it seemed like a good thing to say, "Look! The colors really are this bright!" Why would I NOT want my customers to know that? BUT WAIT.

So what does that imply about ALL of my other photos?

NOOOOOOOOOOO. *falls into a pit of doom!*


Though only a very few of my pictures HAVE been edited for color. And when they were, like in the Thunderhead Earrings, I put a note in the description saying basically, "These pictures have been edited to make them more color-accurate because my camera sucks, so yes, they're edited, but it's better this way, trust me." And yet, my putting that one line of description in a post could have put all of my other pictures into question through the magic of semantics.


Luckily, I'm pretty sure nobody looked at that and thought, "Well, if they WEREN'T edited for color, she'd have put that every time!" Nobody expects me to be that organized, I hope.