Abstract:

According to Carayannis in the editor’s note, the knowledge economy emphasizes views on economics, management, law, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and political science.  Interestingly, this spectrum does not accommodate language and linguistics which should ordinarily provide the basics for any knowledge.  For instance, ambiguity a central part of semantics is considered a fundamental issue in language and communication hence the need to situate a robust study on the knowledge economy from a semantic platform.  Indeed, from literature, the greatest challenge of the modern society appears to be related to meaning in communication (Ogbulogo, 2013).  In the business context for example, observation shows that revisions made on documents of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), lead to misconceptions, vagueness and misunderstanding of terms in international trade. Inevitably, there is the suspicion that modules of training in entrepreneur development studies in our higher education have not incorporated sufficient complements of language studies; hence the need to explore the nature of meaning in the bourgeoning knowledge economy. This reality provides justification for this study. Data is drawn from five domains of international trade, where one hundred lexical items are presented to 20 graduate students and 30 undergraduate students in the Entrepreneurial Development Studies (EDS) class of Covenant University.   Both qualitative and quantitative approaches of analysis were used to elicit the respondents understanding of the semantic import of the key concepts through the use of a questionnaire. The methodological framework is the Business Semantics Management by Pieter De Leenheer (2009) that emphasises activities that bring business stakeholders to fashion out meaning.