Ryan Davidson: Blog post #1

The concept from the textbook, outside readings, and class that I chose is the concept of polysemy or polysemous words. Polysemous means that a word has different meanings. An example of this is the term sweep. It can mean to literally sweep or when a sports team wins a series without losing a game. Or the word farming can mean to literally be cultivating fields or mass producing something. This concept ties into the signification process becuase polysemous words can be the denotation and the connotation can be the same or they can be different. Such as dust can mean literal dust particles or the act of dusting things. So it could be misunderstood when talking. Throughout the readings and concepts from class I had a hard time finding something that stood out to me until this concept because throughout the past few years in college my group of friends and I have created a sort of slang within in english. Making words in the english language polysemous to us. This can applied to all types of slangs within different languages and cultures. An example of this is slight difference between Mandarin as the official language of China but many people speak Cantonese in the southern parts of China or the differences between Spanish in Spain and Spanish in Mexico. Many of the words are the same but used differently.