In
linguistics, semantic overload occurs when a word or phrase has more than one meaning, and is used in ways that convey meaning based on its divergent constituent concepts. Semantic overload is related to the linguistic concept of
polysemy
Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word has a singl ...
. Overloading is related to the psychological concept of
information overload
Information overload (also known as infobesity, infoxication, information anxiety, and information explosion) is the difficulty in understanding an issue and effectively making decisions when one has too much information (TMI) about that issue, ...
, and the computer science concept of
operator overloading. A term that is semantically overloaded is a kind of "overloaded expression" in language that causes a certain small degree of "information overload" in the receiving audience.
An example of this is the
Basque word ''herri'' which can be translated as ''nation; country, land; people, population''; and ''town, village, settlement'',
[Aulestia, G. ''Basque-English Dictionary'' (1989) University of Nevada Press ] amongst other things leading to difficulties in translating the indigenous term
Euskal Herria. Another example is the term ''memory'', especially as used in scholarship.
Expletives are also notable for this quality, and conversely this quality is also a contributor to why such terms may be regarded as crude or inappropriate.
Meanings associated with a semantically overloaded word have different qualities: those the word itself
refers directly to, and other meanings
inferred
Inferences are steps in reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, the word '' infer'' means to "carry forward". Inference is theoretically traditionally divided into deduction and induction, a distinction that i ...
from its use in
context.
Language planning
Minority languages that spread into new domains frequently suffer from semantic overloading by attempting to adapt existing terms to cover new concepts. One such example from
Scottish Gaelic is the over-use of the word ''comhairle'' (originally "advice, counsel") for concepts such as ''committee'', ''council'', and ''consultation'' as exemplified by Donald MacAulay in ''dh'iarr a' chomhairle comhairle air a’ chomhairle chomhairleachaidh'': "The committee sought advice from the consultative council"—a sentence that is opaque in meaning.
[MacAulay, Donald ''New Gaelic'' (1986) Scottish Language, 5, 120-25]
References
Semantics
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