Software systems succeed or fail based on their alignment with stakeholder expectations. Yet, while verification rigorously checks conformance to \emph{specifications}, the crucial validation of implicit, nuanced stakeholder expectations remains a pre-formal, ad-hoc activity. This creates a critical validation gap: systems can be formally correct yet functionally misaligned, leading to integration failures and poor user experience. This paper introduces the core idea of Semantic Expectation Logic (SEL), a novel formalism that \textbf{elevates stakeholder expectations to become the central, formally-reasoned artifact in the validation process}. SEL provides a logic and framework to systematically elicit, model, and quantify the alignment between what stakeholders expect, what the domain requires, and what the system delivers. Through a motivating case study on REST API conventions, we demonstrate how this expectation-centric approach uncovers validation failures that specification-based methods cannot see. SEL charts a new course for validation, reframing it as a quantifiable engineering discipline of expectation alignment.