Imagine three-year-old Damon sitting in a house of worship with his parents. He’s having a great time banging his stuffed toys around until his mother grabs them away during a silent part of the service. Clearly upset, Damon calls her a nasty name. Mom’s face turns bright red, and she escorts Damon out to the car. Damon associated his language with the concept of being unhappy; he was upset about Mom taking his toys, so he uttered the same word he had probably heard a family member use when unhappy with someone.

Semantics involves the relationships among symbols, objects, people, and concepts; it refers to the meaning that words have for people, either because of their definitions or because of their placement in a sentence. Damon had probably observed reactions to the use of the nasty name, so he thought it meant “Give me my toys back.” What Damon had not learned was pragmatics, the ability to use his culture’s symbol systems appropriately. He may have gotten a few laughs by using the language in front of his family at home, but he didn’t realize that it’s inappropriate to use the word in other contexts. When you acquire language, you learn semantics, but when you learn how to use the verbal symbols of a culture appropriately, you learn pragmatics.

Key to understanding semantic and pragmatic meaning are three ideas that we now examine: the multiple meanings of words, their varying levels of abstraction, and their usage in particular groups.