In this paper I argue that within cognitive semantics a social meaning can be seen as emerging from individual notions of meaning, in analogy with, for example, the emergence of a price vector in an equilibrium market. The main factor determining the emergent meaning is who has semantic power, i.e. who in the linguistic community decides the meaning of various expressions. I formulate some general conditions on semantic power and, to some extent in parallel with social choice theory, show how such conditions may constrain the possible forms of social meaning. Basically, one can distinguish between oligarchial and democratic power structures.
By using some elementary notions from model theory, I then outline how the semantic power structure can determine an emergent social meaning. Finally, I show how this analysis explains some aspects of language as a convention.
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