Semantic vs. Poetic Meaning in Human Language

Semantic vs. Poetic Meaning in Human

Language

Rhetorically speaking, semantic (i.e., useful) and poetic (i.e., artistic) uses of human language may seem different from one another, in form as well as function. Semantic meaning is the literal, utilitarian meaning of a word, that is, the way or ways a word is typically used in everyday speech and/or writing. Poetic meaning, on the other hand, generally has to do with way(s) in which a word is used artistically, that is, metaphorically, as synecdoche, or in various other symbolically inflected ways. For example, in comparing the two sentences "Earth has five oceans" and "She cried oceans of tears," comparative semantic and poetic meanings of the word "oceans" become clear. However, the argument exists that semantic and poetic meanings are inherently the same, due to the imbedded "Symbolic Action" ("Burke, Kenneth") of words themselves, i.e., the theory that words themselves are so deeply symbolic in automatic meaning as to transcend separate or unique situations, contexts, occasions, or circumstances.

Because words serve such versatile functions in a variety of human situations and circumstances, language theorist Kenneth Burke suggests that essentially no difference exists between semantic and poetic human uses of them. In examining the Symbolic Action theory of Burke, one encounters an especially interesting challenge to the assumption that differences exist between semantic and poetic meanings within language:

Poetic and rhetoric . . . Or artistic and useful, are not different in terms of the use of language. What people intend in their communication is often irrelevant in relation to the deeper meanings examined by the theory of symbolic action. ("Kenneth Burke: Symbolic Action")

As Burke further suggests, human beings have created language in order to both better comprehend, and to better rationalize the world around them.

Language itself, however, is an artificial system, within which meanings become both automatic and arbitrary. This is true to such an extent, also, that shared meanings, in their commonality of uses and re-uses by human beings, eventually become over-generalized ("Kenneth Burke: Symbolic Action"). Over time, then, over-generalized words actually began to define a situation, rather than the situation itself calling for particular words to be used to uniquely describe it (Burke, A Grammar of Motives, 1945).

Further, as Burke points out, human beings are conditioned (through the repetitive use of language itself) toward automatic need of a word or words for every separate situation, occasion, phenomenon, etc. However, it is extremely unlikely that the same words will always fit the same (or a similar) situation(s). Therefore, "people's actions and thoughts begin to be swayed, and even governed by the language we use to define our reality" ("Kenneth Burke: Symbolic Action")

Burke also argues that inherent in Symbolic Action theory is the concept of hierarchies. Burke's theory of hierarchies within language (which holds that language itself not only creates hierarchies, but also keeps hierarchies in place) (Language as Symbolic Action, 1966; A Rhetoric of Motives, 1950) in many ways parallels Foucault's Language/Power theory (1970a; 1970b; 1972; 1980), which holds that the deeper meaning of discourses (i.e., human language) is always dependent upon social context, from which all language/power relationships themselves necessarily spring.