What's the difference between philosophy of language and semiotics?

How can I be sure that I got the right meaning of what some TV reporter just said? Do I just go and check the dictionary? But what if some word isn't in the dictionary? What if the reporter used it in some different sense? And it sure looks possible that the dictionary is wrong. What if it just doesn't make sense to take it as it is in the dictionary? It seems a pretty difficult question... Are there any philosophical theories about this?

When I am thinking, some of my thoughts and ideas are in words. Some are in feelings and emotions. Others are in concepts or pictures. When I am having thoughts that are not in words it is sometimes very difficult to express these thoughts. Is there a way, using science or philosophy or some other means, to get these thoughts and ideas out to others? D.D.

All spoken and written languages - current or extinct - have things they express poorly or can't express at all. Art can be used to fill in the gaps of the inexpressible. How many languages would a person need to know to express everything, and by being able to express everything, would they be more capable or less capable of art?

Why do we often put our thoughts into words which we have no intention of writing down or speaking? Surely language is a much less efficient way of perceiving the world as it doesn't express our exact viewpoint, therefore we have to add our own meaning to language anyway. Why then, do we sometimes put exact thoughts into an inexact form during the thought process?

Lewis Carroll spoofed logic, semantics, and language in Alice with constructions such as (paraphrased): must I mean what I say when I say what I mean, to which the response was I see what I eat isn't the same as I eat what I see. Chomsky cited "time flies like an arrow" and "fruit flies like bananas". My question is, are such constructions possible in all languages (presumably the above examples are not always directly translatable) especially non-Indo-European ones and, if not, what are the philosophical/linguistic ramifications of this? Does it just boil down to word play in any given language or are there linguistic universals at play? I once read a bilingual Chinese/English American (!) philosopher claiming that Chinese was more conducive to essaying logical analysis than English and, as far as I know, all writing about linguistic philosophy has been in 'Western' languages, usually English. Is this significant? Do individual languages or language families rather than language itself colour our...

How do words get their meaning?

Is every type of happiness or pleasure explainable (possible to articulate through reason or logic)? Should I be distraught that I am unable to articulate clearly some of my pleasures? And does an unexplainable pleasure (if it exists) suffer from its unexplainable nature or flourish because of it?

I recently learned a fact that I was previously unaware of. Helen Keller said, through the use of a form of sign language, that before she could us a 'type' of language she had no thought. This conception of no-thought was very intriguing to me. We are to believe that our language defines our very thoughts. So without language we wouldn't have thoughts to our self. I guess what I really want know is from a philosophical point of view are we able to think without our identity of language? Can thought be just bound to what language we speak?

Is it possible for a statement to be partially true and partially false?