ON WHYS AND WHEREFORES OF E, P, AND A

Miron's comments on J. Kuusinen's paper (see 43:(10) raise a number of critical questions about semantic differential technique and the theory of meaning which lies behind it. The present author responds that semantic differential technique ordinarily measures certain affective features of total meaning, closely related to the dimensions of emotion or feeling, which appear to be universal in the human species. Semantic differential technique highlights these affective features at the expense of other semantic features more familiar to linguists because it forces most qualifier scales to be used metaphorically with most concepts, and the rule seems to be that metaphorically used scales rotate toward those affective dimensions on which they have their highest loadings. This is simultaneously the reason why the semantic differential technique is not a general procedure for discovering semantic features, even though evaluation, potency, and activity (E-P-A) are very significant features of human meaning systems. As to theory, the author concludes that although the E-P-A features of meaning have a many-to-one relation to significates (as must any subset of features), the representational of mediation behavior theory as wholes do not. The differences that remain seem to be matters of preference in metaphysics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.