One of the most interesting phenomenon in psychology to me is the broad category of things that could be primed by simple words, and some potential implications of those findings.

In priming, words that are conceptually close (e.g. cats and dogs), audibly close (e.g. rhyme and dime), and even just related cross mediums (one vs. 1) tend to speed up recognition and production of each other. In this way, one could conceptualize all symbols (including sounds and signs) as living on a sort of interconnected semantic web that's shaped by individual experiences.

Within each culture, these graphs are likely quite similar as well. For example, an English-speaking country would likely have such a web (courtesy of Wikipedia):

I often think about what makes interest writing, conversation, and music just for the fun of it, and one pattern I consistently see between these mediums are that pleasant examples of them often stay close in the semantic web and follows a very specific pattern if it needs to travel further in the graph.

For example, in writing, it's better to say “it's raining cats and dogs” than to say “it's raining buckets and bathtubs”. Both are understandable to listeners, but the latter takes significant effort to parse because these words don't usually appear together, and thus requires a jump in the semantic web.

Similarly, a conversation feel strange and unpleasant if a person jumped from talking about everyday work at the office to a vacation in the Amazons, since these apparently don't share any context. On the other hand, suppose that the person said “I'm really looking forward to the upcoming vacation, which I hope would be as awesome as that time I went to the Amazons”, then that connection is established, and the conversation feels normal and comfortable.

It is the case that an intentional leap in the graph can be done for comedic or dramatic effect, but outside of those scenarios, a leap almost always feel uncomfortable.

Music actually has such a network as well, for example, here are common chord progressions for the Major key (borrowed from Music Theory for Songwriters):

In music, chords have affinities due to pitch similarly, proximity, points of tension, common usage, and a wide variety of other traits. In chord progressions skipping chords would produce an effect very similar to suddenly switching to a random topic or using an unfamiliar idiom. The listener would feel disoriented, and the effect is usually bad (though sometimes it might end up being a pleasant surprise).

In general, I think this sort of semantic web applies to all real-time communications, just on different timescales. A dance or a meal could certainly have such a web at play, and even a large or detailed static image could generate a sort of communication over time that's likely governed by the same rules, but different webs.

These webs, when combined with other universal traversal patterns like hook, repetition, refrain, and climax, and decorated with other common elements like intensity and articulations, feels like it forms a bedrock for much of arts.

One thing I'm super excited about is to imagine how such webs are formed, what they look like biologically, and how they are different across cultures. In another way, I'd be curious to experiment with these a bit more, especially seeing what the rules for utilizing them look like, and how one might go about creating detailed scenes with just a few words.

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Categorized under: #theorizing, #communications, #writing, #psychology