Social Semantics: The Organisation and Grounding of Abstract Concepts

Abstract

concepts, like justice and friendship, are a central feature of our daily lives. Traditionally, abstract concepts are distinguished from other concepts in that they cannot be directly experienced through the senses. As such, they pose a challenge for strongly embodied models of semantic representation that assume a central role for sensorimotor information. There is growing recognition, however, that it is possible for meaning to be ‘grounded’ via cognitive systems, including those involved in processing language and emotion. In this article, we focus on the specific proposal that social significance is a key feature in the representation of some concepts. We begin by reviewing recent evidence in favour of this proposal from the fields of cognitive science and neuroimaging. We then discuss the limited extent to which there is consensus about the definition of ‘socialness’ and propose essential next steps for research in this domain. Taking one such step, we describe preliminary data from an unprecedented large-scale rating study that can help determine how socialness is distinct from other facets of word meaning. We provide a backdrop of contemporary theories regarding semantic representation and social cognition and highlight important predictions for both brain and behaviour.

Quantifying Social Semantics: An Inclusive Definition of Socialness and Ratings for 8,388 English Words

“…Our study also provides some initial insights into the information captured by the socialness measure, but subsequent work will be needed on this matter, as well as its role and behavioural consequences across the lifespan, including during acquisition, retrieval and when the semantic system is impaired. Thus, the socialness norms described here will enable future research into the organization and grounding of conceptual knowledge, and can help target testable predictions about brain and behaviour that can be derived from multiple representation theories (e.g., Borghi et al, 2019) and neurobiological accounts of social semantics (for an extensive discussion, see Pexman, Diveica and Binney, 2021;also Binney et al, 2016;Binney & Ramsey, 2020;Diveica et al, 2021).…”

“…Subsequent research will be needed to more thoroughly explore the precise aspects of our interactions with the social environment that are captured by this inclusive socialness measure, such as those measured by more restricted definitions (for examples, see Pexman et al, 2021).…”

“…Likewise, Borghi et al (2019) argued that both social interactions and linguistic inputs are crucial for the acquisition of abstract concepts (also see Borghi & Binkofski, 2014). In Pexman, Diveica and Binney (2021), we have reviewed these theoretical perspectives as well as two parallel sets of empirical literature which provide some evidence for socialness being a key principle underpinning semantic representation. For example, property generation and feature ratings studies found that social semantic content, or socialness, helps distinguish concrete from abstract concepts (Barsalou & Wiemer-Hastings, 2005;Troche et al, 2014;Wiemer-Hastings & Xu, 2005) and even different subtypes of abstract concepts (Harpaintner et al, 2018;Villani et al, 2019).…”

“…Moreover, socialness as a construct has been defined variably in terms of behavioural descriptiveness, and there is no consensus on the criteria that differentiate social from non-social concepts. The heterogeneity in definitions is summarised by Pexman, Diveica and Binney (2021); some researchers have measured socialness as, for example, the degree to which a word's meaning refers to relationships between people (Troche et al, 2014(Troche et al, , 2017, to social as opposed to individual contexts (Arioli et al, 2021), or to the relationship between self and others (Crutch et al, 2012), and socialness has also been defined as how well words describe social behaviour (Zahn et al, 2007). This variability in the operationalisation of socialness hinders our ability to compare findings across studies and glean a broader understanding of the contribution made by socialness to conceptual representation in the brain, and its behavioural consequences.…”

Quantifying social semantics: An inclusive definition of socialness and ratings for 8388 English words

“…Likewise, Borghi et al (2019) argued that both social interactions and linguistic inputs are crucial for the acquisition of abstract concepts (also see Borghi & Binkofski, 2014). In Pexman et al (2021), we have reviewed these theoretical perspectives as well as two parallel sets of empirical literature, which provide some evidence for socialness being a key principle underpinning semantic representation. For example, property generation and feature ratings studies found that social semantic content, or socialness, helps distinguish concrete from abstract concepts (Barsalou & Wiemer-Hastings, 2005;Troche et al, 2014;Wiemer-Hastings & Xu, 2005) and even different sub-types of abstract concepts (Harpaintner et al, 2018;Villani et al, 2019).…”