Semantic Cohesion

We have seen how signs relate words to the world in ways that are generally denotative of common cultural objects, or particularly connotative of other objects or concepts associated with them, or simply iconic. But, as a sign, a word also relates to other words or signs that give it a particular value in the verbal text itself or co-text. Beyond individual nouns and sounds, words refer to other words by a variety of cohesive devices that hold a text like the Dickinson poem together: pronouns ('it'), demonstratives ('this'), repetition of the same words from one sentence to the next (for example, 'The Attar from the Rose ... The general Rose ... In ceaseless Rosemary') or same sounds from one line to the next (for example, the sound /l/ in 'Lady's Drawer', 'the Lady lie'), recurrence of words that relate to the same idea (for example, 'Suns', 'summer'; 'essential Oils', 'Attar'), conjunctions (for example, 'but', 'when'). These devices capitalize on the associative meanings or shared connotations of a particular community of competent readers who readily recognize the referent of the pronoun 'it' and the lexical reiteration of 'suns' and 'summer', whereas a community of less competent readers might not. Semantic cohesion depends on a discourse community's communal associations across the lines of a poem, or across stretches of talk.

A sign or word may also relate to the other words and instances of text and talk that have accumulated in a community's memory over time, or prior text. Thus, to return, for example, to the Russian sign dusha, which roughly denotes 'a person's inner core', it connotes goodness and truth because it is linked to other utterances spoken and heard in daily life, to literary quotes (for example, 'His soul overflowing with rapture, he yearned for freedom, space, openness' written by Dostoevsky), or to other verbal concepts such as pricelessness, human will, inner speech, knowledge, feelings, thoughts, religion, that themselves have a variety of connotations. When English speakers translate the word dusha by the word 'soul', they are in fact linking it to other English words, i.e. 'disembodied spirit', 'immortal self', 'emotions', that approximate but don't quite match the semantic cohesion established for dusha in the Russian culture. The meanings of words cannot be separated from other words with which they have come to be associated in the discourse community's semantic pool.

Another linguistic environment within which .words carry cultural semantic meaning consists of the linguistic metaphors that have accumulated over time in a community's store of semantic knowledge. Thus, for example, the English word 'argument' is often encountered in the vicinity of words like 'to defend' (as in 'Your claims are indefensible'), 'to shoot down' (as in 'He shot down all of my arguments'), 'on target' (as in 'Her criticisms were right on target'), which has led George Lakoff and Mark Johnson to identify one of the key metaphors of the English language: 'Argument is War'. Some of these metaphors are inscribed in the very structure of the English code, for example, the metaphor of the visual field as container. This metaphor delineates what is inside it, outside it, comes into it, as in 'The ship is coming into view', 'I have him in sight', 'He's out of sight now'. Each language has its own metaphors that provide semantic cohesion within its boundaries.

In all these examples, the semantic meanings of the code reflect the way in which the speech community views itself and the world, i.e. its culture. They are intimately linked to the group's experiences, feelings and thoughts. They are the non-arbitrary expression of their desire to understand and act upon their world.

The Non-Arbitrary Nature of Signs

We said at the beginning that signs have no natural connection with the outside world and are therefore arbitrary. It is precisely this arbitrariness that makes them so amenable to appropriation by members of culturally embedded discourse communities. Speakers and writers use those signs that are most readily available in their environment, without generally putting them into question, or being aware, as Sapir noted, that other signifying relations might be available. As we noted in Chapter 1, socialization into a given discourse community includes making its signifying practices seem totally natural. Native users of a language, for example, do not view the linguistic sign as arbitrary; on the contrary, they view it as a necessity of nature. Jakobson reports the anecdote of one Swiss-German peasant woman who asked why the French used fromage for Käse (cheese); 'Käse ist doch viel naturlicher!' ('Käse is so much more natural!'), she added. Only detached researchers and non-native speakers see the relations between signs as mere contingence.

Native speakers do not feel in their body that words are arbitrary signs. For them, words are part of the natural, physical fabric of their lives. Seen from the perspective of the user, words and thoughts are one. For example, anyone brought up in a French household will swear that there is a certain natural masculinity about the sun [le soleil) and femininity about the moon (la lune). For English speakers, it is perfectly natural to speak of 'shooting down someone's argument'; they don't even think one could talk of arguments in a different way. Having once recognized the semantic cohesion of the Emily Dickinson poem, readers may even come to view the interpretation offered in Chapter 1 as the only one possible - the natural one. Even though, as we have seen, signs are created, not given, and combine with other signs to form cultural patterns of meaning, for native speakers linguistic signs are the non-arbitrary, natural reality they stand for.

The major reason for this naturalization of culturally created signs is their motivated nature. Linguistic signs do not signify in a social vacuum. Sign-making and sign-interpreting practices are motivated by the need and desire of language users to influence people, act upon them or even only to make sense of the world around them. With the desire to communicate a certain meaning to others comes also the desire to be listened to, to be taken seriously, to be believed, and to influence in turn other peoples' beliefs and actions. The linguistic sign is therefore a motivated sign.