susemántica

Susemántica is a proposed framework in linguistics for analyzing how the meanings of words and expressions arise and change through actual language use within communities. The term combines uso (use) and semántica (semantics) in Spanish, and it is often discussed in theoretical and empirical work that focuses on meaning in context rather than fixed definitions.

The framework situates meaning as emergent from everyday discourse and social practice. It emphasizes variation across speakers and communities, context-sensitivity, and the dynamic nature of lexical and sentential meaning. Susemántica seeks to account for how new senses, shifts, and polysemy develop as people encounter and reuse language in real situations.

Core concepts include meaning as usage, context-bound interpretation, and conventionalization processes. Researchers examine large language corpora, conversational data, and fieldwork to trace how certain expressions acquire new senses or lose older ones. Methodologically, susemántica often relies on corpus-based analysis, distributional semantics, and experiments in pragmatics to test how meaning functions in production and comprehension.

Relation to other theories is one of integration and distinction. Susemántica draws on usage-based and cognitive perspectives while engaging with sociolinguistic and pragmatic insights. It contrasts with formal semantic approaches that emphasize fixed truth-conditions, by prioritizing fluidity and social negotiation of meaning.

Criticism centers on methodological challenges, reproducibility across communities, and the scope of generalization. As a relatively new or speculative framework, susemántica remains a topic of debate and is not universally adopted. See also semantics, pragmatics, usage-based linguistics, and corpus linguistics.