Semantic Field
Me: hi, teach me rhetoric ;)
Mentor: this is very interesting topic.. vast, sophisticated and broad structure. yes.. it is very interesting..
Me: yeah, I am already hooked on in. Where should I start?
Mentor: what are you interested in? I am sure you are not interested in classical (western) rhetoric... but I think it is a foundation.
Me: Of course, I am interested how to apply it in practice ;) Writing articles for example.
Mentor: Oh.. So you are not interested in rhetoric as a science.. but as a persuasive communication ;)
Me: Naturally I am more interested in how to use it.
Mentor: you can buy that stuff in any bookstore: how to persuade, how to influence, how to win, how to earn....
Me: All this is available on the Internet too ;)
---
Mentor: learn about semantic field, kid.
Me: The semantic field is the mathematical support for introspective information for human being. With Kripke models, inferential rules are possible among the worlds. Because at any sentence in logic we can associate a part of the semantic field, any conclusion of a chain of inferential deductions can be shown by semantic field. One use the tool of the field theory and the other the tool of inferential process to describe uncertainty in information and also to discover logic structure inside the data.
Me: so this could be used in computer science.
Mentor: maybe. Try to find out why it is useful for linguistic purposes.
Me: will try.. a) if you want to create a metaphor or to analyze existing one, b) it can define more exactly uncertain things and ideas, c) it creates mental images, which are useful to transmit information between two persons speaking different language.
Mentor: I will try to explain:
There is a good science, called Cognitive Linguistics. To make long story short - two guys, Lakoff and Jhonson, wrote a very popular book - metaphors we live by. In that book you can find very clear defined concepts. Probably you can download it on Emule. Also you can read about semiotics, which is the same, but in the opposite direction.
Me: I will buy it.
Mentor: there is no need to buy it.
