Abstract
Concepts are among the cornerstones of a science, and concept development is a necessary prerequisite for meaningful research. In caring science concept analysis belongs to basic research, and should, first and foremost respond to the 'what'-questions. The purpose of this article is to present and discuss the semantic analysing method of P. Koort, and to argue for the usefulness of semantic analysis in theory development. The purpose also is to illustrate the method through analysing the concept of art. The semantic analysing method, developed by P. Koort in the early seventies, consists of an etymological explanation and explanation of concepts of family — a discrimination analysis. The semantic analysis shows that art has the greatest degree of synonymy with dexterity (71%), aesthetics (50%), skill (50%) and proficiency (50%). The discussion of the results also shows that the concept of skill is related to the levels of doing, being and becoming in helping the suffering patient, and that the caregiver should have competence in and be prepared for a 'journey' with the patient on all those levels. Without a semantic analysis the concept of skill's relationship to these different levels would have been difficult to expose. The concept of proficiency has also gained a deeper meaning during the analysis.