Ogden and Richards’ theory abridged
From O&R’ theory, people think words have a unique, precise meaning,
which (according to them) is wrong. This error leads to misunderstandings.
The authors then claim that we need to solve these problems to enhance
understanding between people.
The semiotic triangle
The book is mainly focused on words. Words are considered as symbols that
conventionally stand for objects of the world (the referent). This relation
between a word and an object is made through the image of the object in the
brain (the reference). Therefore, meaning depends from the relationships
between the word (the symbol), the image in the brain (the reference) and
the object in the world (the referent). The links between these three poles
describe a triangle traditionally known as the “semiotic triangle”. In fact,
there is no direct link between the word and the object, but the image of the
object in the brain is a kind of mandatory go-between that introduces a
personal and emotive dimension into meaning.Note that this semiotic triangle is not new and has not been initially
introduced by O&R. For example, comparable ideas are already present in
Charles Pierce’s (1839–1914) works; this is clearly mentioned as such in the
appendix of O&R’ book (p. 279). However, O&R popularized the semiotic
triangle. The book will be largely studied in English speaking universities. It
is still widely used and accepted as such, e.g. in communication departments.
2.2 Emotive language
According to O&R, people believe that every word has a precise, correct
meaning. But in reality, meaning is largely driven by personal experience
(words evoke different things or feelings, based on past experience),
therefore, the same word means different things to different people. As a
matter of fact, for O&R it is because of personal experience that people use
words in such or such manner, which leads to misunderstandings.
O&R then propose a series of solutions to avoid misunderstandings. It is
possible to reduce ambiguity by 1) Providing clear definitions (specify what,is included in the meaning of a given word); 2) Using metaphors (idem,
especially for relations between words or notions); 3) Using “feedforward”
(taking into account the user, his past and his expectations, as far as
possible); and 4) Using Basic English (a reduced set of precise words used
as primitives).
Concerning this last point, O&R think that it is possible to define a basic,
controlled vocabulary insofar human feelings are excluded from this basic
vocabulary (Ogden, 1930). The reduced vocabulary can be considered as a
set of semantic primitives, and complex notions can be explained by
combining these primitives. As we will see later on, this work received
some echo from the Artificial Intelligence community since semantic
primitives is a key component of any semantic analysis (especially Machine
Translation that requires an interlingua, cf. Léon, 2007).
