What are symbols? Using the notions of abstract, arbitrary, intentional, uniquely human, and culturally and contextually bound, discuss how these ideas apply to the word comfort.
What will be an ideal response?
Symbols are words that represent ideas, people, places, or concepts. Symbols are abstract, arbitrary, intentional, and uniquely human. Comfort is arbitrary because there is no likeness between the letters and what it looks like to be comfortable other than a general shared understanding of the word’s definition. Comfort is abstract because it is it is not physically similar to the idea of comfort, and there are complex ideas of what comfort means. Comfort is intentional because there is a general social agreement about what the meaning of the word is. Comfort is uniquely human because animals cannot express their comfort through words. Comfort is contextually bound because, for example, if you live in a cold climate, comfort may mean wearing warm clothes, whereas in a cool climate, comfort might mean air conditioning. Comfort is culturally bound because it has multiple meanings—polysemy—for different people. One may think of having comfort in a social sense, with a group or people or with one’s college, or perhaps it has to do with body temperature. Or it could be viewed as a verb: to comfort another person.
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