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...
. . 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…
