https://grafemas.net/series/social-semantics/ Recent content in Social Semantics on Γραφεμας Hugo -- gohugo.io en Sun, 22 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://grafemas.net/blog/social-semantics/karatani-isonomia/ Sun, 22 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://grafemas.net/blog/social-semantics/karatani-isonomia/ In Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy, Kōjin Karatani offers a powerful corrective to Athenocentric narratives of philosophy’s birth by relocating its emergence within the distinct social structures of the Ionian polis. His central claim—that philosophy arose in tandem with the political condition of isonomia (equality without rule)—grounds intellectual history in material social forms, particularly the dissolution of tribal affiliation and the rise of voluntary association in colonial settlements. By shifting from a Marxist focus on modes of production to modes of exchange, Karatani develops a flexible yet rigorously systematic account of how transformations in political and economic organization generate shifts in cultural consciousness. https://grafemas.net/blog/social-semantics/modeling/ Sun, 22 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://grafemas.net/blog/social-semantics/modeling/ There is a strong tendency in the humanities towards positivism. This occurs even among the more critical speculative literary critics who claim to opose positivism. For example , many books on classical author like Homer, Plato, etc, promise to deliver a new and final reading of such authors. Lack of metadiscursive reflection. Answers instead of questions. Some set to out to prove before wondering. Prefering difficutl questions to answers… It is better to produce models than explanations. https://grafemas.net/blog/social-semantics/ Sun, 22 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://grafemas.net/blog/social-semantics/ ** No content below YAML for the series _index. This file is a leaf bundle, and provides settings for the listing page layout and sidebar content.** https://grafemas.net/blog/social-semantics/word-vectors/ Fri, 18 Feb 2022 22:01:06 -0800 https://grafemas.net/blog/social-semantics/word-vectors/ Word vectors are a particularly useful tool for the investigation of ancient discourses. They allow us to explore associations of concepts that pervade either an entire culture or a group of people. Recently, Kozlowski, Taddy, and Evans (2019) used word vectors and embedding to study the semantics of class structure in 20th-century American cultures, a publication that shows exciting results. Using diachronic word embeddings trained on large corpora of books, the authors traced how the semantic associations of class-related terms (like “rich,” “poor,” “working class,” or “elite”) evolved over time, revealing shifting ideological alignments in American discourse.