Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners does not go that route. It opens with a shot of a snowy forest, where a deer quietly noses around for food. Into the frame comes the barrel of a shotgun.
Just so, semantic theories and foundational theories of meaning are, pretty clearly, different sorts of theories. The term âtheory of meaningâ has, in the recent history of philosophy, been used to stand for both semantic theories and foundational theories of meaning.
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between words, phrases and other bits of language and on how these words and phrases connect to the world. Pragmatics is similar, but it involves the study of how speakers of a language use the language to communicate and accomplish what they want.