Meaning representation is encyclopaedic
The third central principle of cognitive semantics holds that semantic structure is encyclopaedic in nature. This means that words do not represent neatly packaged bundles of meaning (the dictionary view), but serve as ‘points of access’ to vast repositories of knowledge relating to a particular concept or conceptual domain (e.g. Langacker 1987). We illustrated this idea above in relation to the concept BACHELOR. Indeed, not only do we know that certain kinds of unmarried adult males would not normally be described as bachelors, we also have cultural knowledge regarding the behaviour associated with stereotypical bachelors. It is ‘encyclopaedic’ knowledge of this kind that allows us to interpret this otherwise contradictory sentence:
On the face of it, identifying Jane’s husband (a married man) as a bachelor would appear to be contradictory. However, given our cultural stereotype of bachelors, which represents them as sexual predators, we understand the utterance in (4) as a warning issued to Jane concerning her husband’s fidelity. As this example illustrates, the meanings associated with words often draw upon complex and sophisticated bodies of knowledge. We will look in detail at the encyclopaedic view of meaning in Chapter 7.
Of course, to claim that words are ‘points of access’ to encyclopaedic meaning is not to deny that words have conventional meanings associated with them. The fact that example (5) means something different from example (6) is a consequence of the conventional range of meanings associated with safe and happy.
However, cognitive semanticists argue that the conventional meaning associated with a particular word is just a ‘prompt’ for the process of meaning con struction: the ‘selection’ of an appropriate interpretation against the context of the utterance. For example, the word safe has a range of meanings, and the meaning that we select emerges as a consequence of the context in which the word occurs. To illustrate this point, consider the examples in (7) against the context of a child playing on the beach.
In this context, the interpretation of (7a) is that the child will not come to any harm. However, (7b) does not mean that the beach will not come to harm. Instead, it means that the beach is an environment in which the risk of the child coming to harm is minimised. Similarly, (7c) does not mean that the shovel will not come to harm, but that it will not cause harm to the child. These examples illustrate that there is no single fixed property that safe assigns to the words child, beach and shovel. In order to understand what the speaker means, we draw upon our encyclopaedic knowledge relating to children, beaches and shovels, and our knowledge relating to what it means to be safe. We then ‘construct’ a meaning by ‘selecting’ a meaning that is appropriate in the context of the utterance.
Just to give a few examples, the sentence in (7b) could be interpreted in any of the following ways, given an appropriate context. Some of these meanings can be paraphrased as ‘safe from harm’, and others as ‘unlikely to cause harm’: (1) this beach has avoided the impact of a recent oil spill; (2) this beach is not going to be dug up by property developers; (3) due to its location in a temper ate climate, you will not suffer from sunburn on this beach; (4) this beach, which is prone to crowding, is free of pickpockets; (5) there are no jellyfish in the sea; (6) the miniature model beach with accompanying model luxury hotels, designed by an architect, which was inadvertently dropped before an important meeting, has not been damaged.
