It's all Semantics - right?

Or is it pragmatics? (To answer the question of this post.)

I think people often claim that something is just semantics when they don't see a distinction between two positions. Let's say there is a position x, and a position y. Both x & y are very similar, yet there is a difference. I think when people claim that it is all semantics what they are claiming for x & y, is that there is a distinction without difference. At first I thought that those who claim that something is all semantics were giving a red herring (a red herring is a distraction from an argument, making a point that isn't relevant to the discussion) but I think that what they are really claiming is that there is a distinction without difference. At least, this would be a charitable interpretation on my part.

I bring these points up, because I am writing a paper on what the semantic content of utterances are. Utterances can include spoken and written sentences. So, how do we determine the semantic content of utterances. I hold to the position that the semantic content of an utterance is determined by the syntactic structure of the utterance. However, some people claim that the semantic content of an utterance is determined by the context in which the utterance was uttered. I think that this position is incoherent. If you think about it, how many times in your life have you uttered the same sentence, with respect to the words and context? Never (this was a rhetorical question). Yet, somehow communication takes place. How can communication occur if the meanings of an utterance and the words in the utterance always change from context to context? I don't know. But don't think that I have just given a knockdown dragout argument refuting context dependent meaning. Remember, right now I am talking about the semantic context of an utterance. What is said (or asserted) is different from the semantic content, as well as what is implicated (implicature).

So, anyway, I hope that my thoughts were somewhat coherent and I will post more as my argument develops.