Work Text:
Semantic relatedness.
“Not semantic similarity,” Alex tries to explain, bouncing slightly on her toes. She’d been practicing her speech religiously for the past two weeks in the mirror, taking her mom’s notes when she’d done a dress rehearsal in front of her. “Semantic similarity doesn’t include-”
She catches her classmate whispering something to another, and her stomach twists uncomfortably in a sensation itching in Alex’s brain to be named. Flipping, yet almost in a cylindrical rotation, the pit in her stomach grows increasingly agitated as her heart speeds up. The whispering classmate looks up at her now, her blue eyes glinting with cruelty. Alex blinks quickly as her peers start to titter amongst themselves, the wetness gathering in her eyes a rare display of emotion. An emotional display she now wished she understood how to repress. Her classmates' scorn did not warrant naming the way these physical sensations did, Alex knew what it indicated intimately: social humiliation.
Failure.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
Semantic relatedness.
Alex has long since learned how to avoid bouncing on her toes when she’s excited. Her speeches are more eloquent but no less well-rehearsed, and she wished her mother were still here to give her notes.
Neither of these facts was going to help her now, though, as they certainly weren’t date-night worthy.
The chair she was sitting on was sturdy, the dark-grained walnut felt smooth and polished underneath her legs, and she certainly wasn’t about to make a formal speech in such a quietly atmospheric restaurant. The man across from her is already practically silent, picking at his food as Alex slowly spins her fork, watching the pasta twirl around the tines with unusually rapt fascination as she speaks.
“Fischler’s work is revolutionary in his field, his 1977 study on semantic facilitation without association in a lexical decision task…”
“Alex…”
“…provides peer-reviewed data that confirms a theory…”
“Alex.”
“...on word encoding for known associate word pairs and semantic relatedness I’ve believed to be true for years-”
“Alex… Alex! Can we not do this right now? I had a really long day. And I…well, just- please.”
“Sorry, I didn’t realize I was rambling.”
Alex’s brain buzzes intensely, the gripping need to finish her thought becoming louder and noisier until it’s practically overwhelming. She wasn’t rambling at all, she had a clear train of thought and she tried not to let it bother her that said train had been derailed. After another moment of silence and nothing but poor attempts at stimulating a conversation with her boyfriend of 10 months, Alex quickly abandons a half-hearted attempt to distract herself by mentally repeating various songs when she realizes a connection.
“You know, semantic similarity has practical applications too. It could help you at work, after all, the most common are-”
“I want to break up.”
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
“Semantic. Relatedness.”
“A concept encompassing any relation between two terms, and one of the foundational aspects of forensic linguistics. Can anyone tell me the difference between semantic relatedness and semantic similarities?”
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
Semantic relatedness.
Working at the BAU was everything Alex had imagined. Fulfilling, she’d explained to James. It was the most accurate description, although she knew it fell unbelievably short of the vindication she felt. Despite them doing so much good, the work itself was not good, which meant that it was off the table. Aside from that, Alex is much too practical and healthily detached to find too much pride in what she does. But knowing she’s saving people using the field she has dedicated her life to feels like everything has finally snapped into place.
Unfortunately, nothing was fulfilling at the moment. It had been hours since the last reported kidnapping; they had a heavily religious unsub with an unusually inconsistent time frame, and at least seven previous victims. They’re in the middle of bouncing ideas off of each other, hoping to find a lead somewhere as they pour over a handful of the unsub’s letters for the millionth time.
A sharp knock at the door and the local head detective pokes his head into the room. He’s a nice enough man, but his current demeanor is too tense for Alex’s comfort. She gently glances around the room and catches Rossi’s eye. He offers her a conspiratorial grimace and she raises her eyebrows quickly in a subtle shrug. ”Agent Hotchner? May I speak with you alone for a minute?”
Hotch nods, although Alex thinks she sees a hint of suspicion in his eyes. “Of course.” He excuses himself, glancing pointedly and nodding at the rest of them to continue while he’s gone.
“What Hotch was saying makes sense. His stressor this might’ve even driven him to religion in the first place- an unsub like this would become obsessive over it,” Derek says.
“If the women he kills are surrogates for someone, he may believe he’s doing them a favor by reuniting them with God,” Spencer notes, back still turned to them as he works out the geographical profile.
“His writing reflects that, at least in theory,” Alex half-agrees, eyes flicking back and forth between Spencer’s hand circling various locations and the faded writing in her own hands. “It’s strange. Look, he separates himself from the murders in most of his syntax, but he still uses the victims’ names directly.”
“Could it just be that he has no remorse?” JJ questions.
Alex shakes her head slowly. “It’s hard to say, but it seems to be more of a separation. He’s practically giving credit to God through his poems.”
“Maybe he has some sort of religious delusion. Thinks he’s a mouthpiece for Him,” Rossi offers.
“But this level of organization screams rational,” Derek says, frowning as he leans back in his chair and motions to the graphic crime scene photos in front of him. “I don’t think he’d be able to pull this off if he was delusional.”
“We know he’s not a cult leader,” JJ muses aloud. “He’s not charming enough, and these kills clearly scream insecure. But what about a follower?”
Alex thinks about it for a moment, trying to place that new identity into his letters. “That’s a possibility.” She can almost sense the beginning of an inkling forming in her head, but it remains stubbornly out of her reach. Something about a cult seems to fit almost too perfectly with the unsub’s writing.
“We had Garcia check out any cult leaders in the area,” Derek says. “Hotch had her drop it after we examined the victims. Maybe we need to rethink that angle. If the unsub is so devoted, he definitely would have stood out by now.”
“Good call. Only problem is, I doubt any cults are gonna be chomping at the bit to talk to the FBI,” Rossi points out. “And they’re not big on employee records.”
Spencer, who had fallen silent for an uncharacteristically long time, pipes up at that.
“Actually, a lot of cults have specific writings for different sects,” he explains, turning away from the map to face the team. “They’re usually written by the leaders, but in cults with prolonged periods of unrest or in times of significant leadership change, new texts are often written by devout followers. If our unsub is truly prolific, we might be able to analyze these texts and find semantic similarities between his personal letters and the texts.”
Alex’s head snaps up at the mention of her specialty, her eyes sparkling as she launches into eager explanation. “Semantic relationships, actually. Semantic relatedness is an overarching definition that includes semantic similarities, but it’s a bit wider; it also includes concepts such as antymony and meronymy, or-”
Alex cuts off, standing abruptly as she hastily grabs one of the letters splayed across the table. How had she not connected this earlier?
“Blake?”
“Meronymy,” Alex murmurs softly, lost in thought as she suddenly grabs a different letter. Her body language shifts minutely as she skims over it, everyone's eyes on their newest member. “Of course…”
“Care to share with the rest of the class?” Rossi asks, teasing. When he gets no response, Rossi turns his head toward the resident genius instead, although his expectant eyebrow raise is nearly lost on Spencer as the younger profiler watches Alex intently.
After a moment, Spencer slowly tears his eyes away before starting to speak. “Meronymy. It’s a type of semantic relation between two words, where the meronym has a ‘part-of’ relationship with its holonym. The meronym denotes a part whereas its holonym denotes the corresponding whole,” he explains, passion for the subject spilling into every word.
“Meronymy has roots in mereology, which was theorized of as early as the 5th century B.C. It’s actually fascinating-“
“Yeah, sounds thrilling,” JJ deadpans, cutting him off lightheartedly.
Spencer frowns a little before returning to the map, while the rest of the team giggles softly. Both reactions go entirely unnoticed by Alex as she finally looks up again, eyes twinkling.
“God must be the unsub’s holonym; he truly believes he is a part of God Himself,” Alex says. She resists the urge to snap her fingers, sitting up even straighter as a bolt of realization courses through her. “And it’s evident in the unsub’s poetry.” She spreads the letters in front of the rest of the team and they lean forward as she points to various passages and lines. “Look: ‘We are all a part of something bigger’, ‘serving god puts the pieces of myself together’. The unsub feels broken, incomplete- to him, this is necessary.”
“So… the letters- he’s too devoted to just be a member,” Rossi says, nodding as he pours over the theory in his mind and writes notes in his notebook.
“He’s proven his loyalty somehow,” Derek agrees. “Guys, our unsub’s gotta be a high-ranking member.”
“Only problem is, which cult?”
“I’ll call Garcia,” JJ volunteers, the number already halfway dialed as she goes to leave the room and nearly runs into Hotch. He quietly sidesteps her, the suspicion in his eyes now replaced by professional determination.
“Let’s deliver the profile.”
Alex gathers the unsub’s letters quickly, smiling at Spencer as they walk to brief the local police.
“The unsub that we’re looking for is a religious extremist…”
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
Semantic relatedness.
Alex sits solemn and rigid in the visitor chair as she listens to the heart monitor’s steady beeping mocking her. The uncomfortable metal is starting to hurt, and she envies Garcia for the millionth time, whose uncanny ability to fall asleep anywhere was coming in handy. It brings a quick fond smile to Alex’s face despite the situation.
She fidgets, only just resisting the urge to pace around the room by whispering random rap lyrics under her breath. Anything to distract her from what this is.
Her failure, again.
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
Semantic relatedness.
Alex had always disliked conducting her own linguistic studies.
They were unbelievably fascinating, and the information they provided was invaluable, but the accompanying statistical computing had never been Alex’s strong suit. Her math skills were undeniably above passable- that didn’t mean she enjoyed using them. Instead, she would usually enlist the help of a TA or an overly eager graduate student whenever she could, if only to double and triple-check her work before she sent it off to be peer-reviewed and published.
Still, it didn’t take a statistical genius to calculate the relatedness between this pair of terms, not as she attempted to smile at the man in front of her. “I’ll walk you home.”
“Spencer” and “Ethan”.
It was 100%.