CYC 301 Chapter 6: Interpersonal Chapter 6 Text Notes
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The denotative meaning of a word creates content, is the literal meaning (ex. from the dictionary) which the connotative meaning conveys feelings, personal meanings for each person, individualized. We call words concrete if we can experience the thing it refers to with a sense (ex. touch, smell, taste), we call words abstract if we cannot (ex. transportation, interpretable) Most of the times words have an arbitrary meaning, unless we have a common meaning for a word misunderstanding or misinterpretation will occur, especially between cultures. Semantics is the study of words and meaning, and one type of semantic theory is symbolic interaction which says that as a society we are bound together by our common use of symbols. Words give us a tool to create our world by naming and labeling what we experience; for example we create our self worth largely with the labels we apply to ourselves.