Lexical and

semantic fields
Advanced textual analysis
Teachers and students (and text-books too) often refer to lexical fields
and semantic fields as if they were the same thing.
This resource suggests a distinction which should prove helpful
in advanced textual analysis, and also in developing students’ own
writing.
In examining any text, it’s helpful firstly to distinguish between
lexical items and grammatical items.
●● Lexical items comprise the choice of content-words in a text –
that is, the words which contribute substantial meaning. These are
likely to be nouns, adjectives, main verbs, and adverbs.
●● Grammatical items are words which enable relationships to
be established between the lexical items. These are likely to be
conjunctions, prepositions, determiners, and auxiliary verbs.
Here are the opening lines of a very simple nursery rhyme, with the
grammatical items in italics:
Jack and Jill
Went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down
And broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.
The lexical items tell us who was involved, what happened, and how.
The grammatical items allow the relationship between the lexical
items to be made clear: for example, Jack and Jill had to go up before
they could come down; there was no specific pail of water – it was
not “the pail” but “a pail”.
Lexical field is a term which refers to the general area of denotative
meaning which a word inhabits. So “Jack” and “Jill” are proper nouns
from the lexical field of British names; “fell” and “tumbling” are verbs
from a lexical field of accidental movement.
“Jack and Jill” is a very simple text. We are not likely to learn much
more than the surface meaning by asking ourselves what field(s) the
lexical items come from.

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If the rhyme had many more verses, each telling us of the adventures
and accidents experienced by these two clumsy characters, we might
expect to find lexis from the field of physical injuries: cuts, bruises, and
broken bones. And if the audience of such a text were to be medical
practitioners rather than small children, we might expect more
technical lexis: abrasions, contusions, and fractures.
As students will see, the second italicised list above is a set of
synonyms for the first. If we change the audience of the text, we might
need to change the register to include more complex and precise
terms. A doctor in the Accident and Emergency department of the
local hospital would not be satisfied with the explanation that Jack
broke his crown; that doctor might be examining Jack to see if he had
suffered a sub-dural haematoma.
So, in a more complex text for a specialist audience, we would expect
to find more technical lexis. In this case, the lexical field would be
one of physical injuries caused by accidents.
Semantic field is a term which refers to the connotative area of
meaning which a word inhabits. We noticed that in the nursery
rhyme about Jack and Jill, the lexical items “fell” and “tumbling” are
verbs from a lexical field of accidental movement. The latter is a more
descriptive term than the former: its denotative meaning includes a
sense of how Jill fell.
If we think about connotative meaning too, we could say that both of
these terms suggest carelessness and/or clumsiness. Jack didn’t “jump”
– which would be deliberate – but “fell”, which is accidental. Jill
didn’t “follow” Jack more carefully, but “came tumbling”, suggesting
she either didn’t care or couldn’t stop. These terms are from a
semantic field of loss of control.
As we said before, “Jack and Jill” is a very simple text. But if we re-
imagine the situation and re-cast this text for a different audience,
we might find we would need to be very careful about creating
a particular semantic field. For example, if Jack’s injuries proved
to be more serious, a report might be needed for the police, for
an insurance company, or for the Health and Safety Executive
responsible for water-collection in buckets from dangerous hills.

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 Activity 1

There’s often great value in allowing students to play with

language use. A “fun” activity would be to encourage students to
re-write this nursery rhyme, or another one, or any well-known
children’s story, for a completely different audience.
They would need to consider aspects of lexical fields where the
purpose was more or less informative and the audience more or
less expert.
They would need to consider aspects of semantic fields where the
purpose was more or less persuasive and the format more or less
fixed.
As in every encounter with a text, students need to be thinking
about how context affects register.

Activity 2

More advanced students might try a specific extension of the

“Jack and Jill” re-cast task:
●● You have been asked to contribute an article to a journal of
Gender Studies. The subject of the article is to be differences
in attitudes to risk amongst male and female children. Write
the opening 120-150 words of this article, basing what you
write on the ideas of “Jack and Jill”.
●● Compare the style and language of your response with the
style and language of the original text.

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 Activity 3

This is a whole-class activity

●● Using a blackboard/whiteboard, flip-chart, interactive whiteboard/projector, choose a term
from a particular semantic field. This is likely to work best with an adjective or an abstract
noun, preferably one with fairly neutral associations – i.e. neither pejorative nor ameliorative.
●● Make a three-column chart in which you will record suggestions as to terms from a similar
semantic field. The middle column will be for terms which have neutral associations, the
other two columns for terms with positive and associations respectively.
●● For example, compile terms from the semantic field of being alone. Students may have in
mind people or places or both, and are likely to suggest: solitary / deserted / lonely / single /
isolated / unique.
●● Students can then generate specific examples of the usage of each term in its neutral and/or
positive and/or negative sense(s).
●● Point out to students, if they haven’t seen this for themselves, that one term might have
positive, neutral or negative associations according to the context of use – e.g. a lonely
person is likely to feel unhappy, while a lonely place might be very attractive.

Positive connotations Neutral connotations Negative connotations

single-handed alone isolated

e.g. On June 14, 2007, e.g. I was alone in my room at e.g. she felt isolated from her
Bhavik Gandhi became the the time former friends
first Asian to row the Atlantic
single-handed, non-stop, and
unsupported from Spain to
Antigua

independent single lonely

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