Open AccessA Survey on the Semantic Field of ‘Vagabond’
Author(s) -
Avishek Ray
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
anglica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.101
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 0860-5734
DOI - 10.7311/0860-5734.26.2.04
Subject(s) - referent , semantic field , contingency , meaning (existential) , epistemology , linguistics , context (archaeology) , field (mathematics) , constructivism (international relations) , semantic change , sociology , philosophy , history , politics , mathematics , pure mathematics , international relations , archaeology , political science , law
How we perceive a certain concept is grounded in the ‘language game’: the values, prejudices, dispositions, and cultural baggage among its interpretive communities. In other words, there is no ‘true meaning’ inherent in a word per se; rather the meaning is derived out of what Derrida (1993) calls the ‘chain’ of signifi cation: the context, history, contingency, and often semantic contradictions that render a word polysemic. Taking off from here, this paper seeks to unpack the social ‘constructivism’ immanent in the a priori assumptions that cloak the idea of the ‘vagabond’. While invoking the contingency in the genesis and semantic history of ‘vagabond’ as a case study, this paper illustrates how meanings of certain heuristic concepts – in this case, ‘vagabond’, without a fixed referent – are often (re)confi gured, not because of reasons entirely linguistic, but rather due to changes in the prevailing epistemic paradigms.