The Epistemologies of Linguistic Science: Reassessing Structuralism, Redefining the Sememe

Caldwell’s aim here is to provide the context within which his own theory is meant to be understood. He gives a brief history of the Structuralist approach to linguistics to shed light on both its failings and its insights. According to Caldwell its key failure to provide a semantically consistent analysis of the system of ordinary language was due to the scope of this analysis. The principle of the differential of meaning could not provide the answers sought when applied to language as a whole. However, states Caldwell, when ordinary language is not viewed as a one large system, and the differential is applied to particular speech acts – small, local discourses – such analysis yields semantic consistency. This “molecule” is the arena wherein a word comes to have meaning in contrast to its immediate “others”; and as such, Caldwell’s own theory of Molecular Sememics is perhaps best understood as something of a moderate or micro-structuralism.