Quotes About Semantics

An entire mythology is stored within our language.

In this sort of predicament, always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word (good, for instance)? From what sort of examples? In what language-games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings.

For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.

But all propositions of logic say the same thing. That is, nothing.

Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. ... (They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful.)

There is no such thing as an isolated proposition. For what I call a proposition is a position in the game of language.

Ich möchte den Ausdruck ' Ich weiß ' für die Fälle reservieren , in denen er im normalen Sprachverkehr gebraucht wird.

I conceive the proposition—like Frege and Russell—as a function of the expressions contained in it.

Tautology and contradiction are, however, not senseless; they are part of the symbolism, in the same way that "0" is part of the symbolism of Arithmetic.

For the essence of the symbol cannot be altered without altering its sense.

the conditions for sense rather than nonsense in combinations of symbols;

2.22 What a picture represents it represents independently of its truth or falsity, by means of its pictorial form.

That ?, ?, etc., are not relations in the sense of right and left, etc., is obvious.

But is it our fault, yours and mine, if words in themselves are empty? Empty, my dear friend. You fill them with your meaning, as you speak them to me; while I, in taking them in, inevitably fill them with my own. We thought we understood each other; we did not understand each other at all.

We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.

She described the work as Girl Friday; it was, in fact, Dogsbody, which scanned perfectly, and after all, words mean what you want them to mean. These

Well, it's really no use our talking in the way we have been doing if the words we use mean something different to each of us...and nothing.

It is not often that we use language correctly; usually we use it incorrectly, though we understand each others meaning.

So to say that you don't believe in the supernatural is a contradiction in terms - because it means that you also don't believe in the natural. Neither can exist without the other.' 'Oh come on', I said impatiently. 'That's just semantics'. 'Yes, you're right. But the whole world is made up of semantics and yours are those of the seventeenth century. Even though you think you are modern.

who says dog means dog?

The point,' Ms. Conyers continued, is that no word had one specific definition. Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life.

I told you. It was interesting' [Annabel] 'Interesting,' he [Owen] said, 'is not a word.' 'Since when?

No word has one specific definition.Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life -Ms.Conyers of Sarah Dessen's Lock and Key

Sometimes what seems to be a difference in opinions is in fact just a difference in definitions.