Common Sense, Language, and Semantic Primes: Liminal or Constant Concepts of Psychology?

Abstract

Common sense, language, and semantic primes are linguistic and psychological elements that enable people to speak and to understand each other with ease. Ease and fluidity of interaction do not, however, arise on their own. On the contrary, if we lose common sense, commonly shared language and even some primitive basic components of language, such as semantic primes, we face disorderliness, chaos, and misunderstandings in small and large group interactions. Such a dystopian scenario sounds extreme, but this article presents an argument that we now witness increasing decay of both “common sense” and “common word meanings,” as our mass and social media practices change. Without the cultural psychological key notions of common sense and common word meanings, the necessary psychic unity decreases, as Jan Smedslund’s (1988) psychologic posits. I propose as an antidote to the observable disorderliness and the loss of “common meaning” a critical analysis of these core concepts and an increased effort to regenerate common meanings. While the media “narrow-cast” meanings to small groups of like-minded individuals, such like-mindedness is also at the heart of the process of making something “common,” in any sense. Thus, if we become good at reflecting and understanding fundamental semantic primes and basic psychological axioms of our language, we are also better equipped to consider unfamiliar word meanings with flexibility. This would enable new meanings in the social regulation of common language and interaction between people who otherwise “talk past one another.”