Postcolonial Semantics

Abstract

“Postcolonial semantics” is the study of meaning and meaning- making in postcolonial contexts, and at the same time, it is a way of articulating and mediating metasemantic critique. In this paper, my aim is to provide a brief overview of postcolonial semantics as an emerging field and approach, focusing on central concepts and analytical scopes. The theoretical backdrop for the establishment of postcolonial semantics is partly found in the developments of new fields, such as colonial and postcolonial linguistics, postcolonial pragmatics, and decolonial linguistics, and partly in the cognitive and cultural renewals of linguistic semantics. The cognitive cultural semantics to which this special issue is devoted is a conceptual kind of semantics, as opposed to a “realist” (or “referential”) semantics. It is also a semantics of “understanding” (U-semantics), rather than a semantics of “truth” (T-semantics). Synthesizing the overall aims of these movements, we can say that postcolonial semantics is a conceptual and U-semantic approach to the linguacultural complexities that colonial language encounters have brought about, and an approach that combines cultural and critical perspectives. Postcolonial semantics engages critically with the semantic conceptualizations born out of colonial-era linguistic worldviews, especially in the form of a critique of the terminological and conceptual biases that have entered into the frameworks of modern cognitive and social sciences, including Eurocentric and Anglocentric concepts and terminologies that characterize the vocabulary and priorities of modern linguistics.

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