Chapter 4
Language, Meaning, and Interpretation
Is literature a special kind of language or is it a special use of language? Is it language organized in distinctive ways or is it language granted special privileges? I argued in Chapter 2 that it won't work to choose one option or the other literature involves both properties of language and a special kind of attention to language. As this debate indicates. questions about the nature and the roles of language and how to analyse it have been central to theory. Some of the major issues can be focused through the problem of meaning. What is involved in thinking about meaning?
Meaning in literature
Take the lines which we earlier treated as literature, a two-line poem by Robert Frost
THE SECRET SITS
We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
What is'meaning here? Well, there's a difference between asking about the meaning of a text(the poem as a whole) and the meaning of a word. We can say that dance means to perform a succession of rhythmic and patterned movements, but what does this text mean? It suggests, you might say, the futility of human doings: we go round and around, we can only suppose. More than that, with its rhyme and its air of knowing what it is doing, this text engages the reader in a process of puzzling over dancing and supposing. That effect, the process the text can provoke, is part of its meaning. So. we have the meaning of a word and the meaning or provocations of a text: then, in between, there's what we might call the meaning of an utterance: the meaning of the act of uttering these words in particular circumstances. What oct is this utterance performing. is it woming or admitting, lamenting or boasting for example? Who is we here and what does dancing mean in this utterance
We can't just ask about'meaning', then. There are at least three dep different dimensions or levels of meaning: the meaning of a word. of rail an utterance, and of a text. Possible meanings of words contribute to disti the meaning of an utterance, which is an act by a speaker. (And the Oxfo meanings of words. intum. come from the things they might do in parti e utterances) Finally. the text,which here represents an unknown perso speaker making this enigmatical utterance. is something an author has arriva constructed. and its meaning is not a proposition but what it does its identi potential to affect readers.
We have different kinds of meaning. but one thing we can say in general may b is that meaning is based on difference. We don't know who we'refers peopl to in this text: only that it is'we'as opposed to alone, and to he such she'it'. you, and'they'. 'We' is some indefinite plural group that includes whatever speaker we think is involved. Is the reader included in we or not? Is we' everyone except the Secret. or is it a special group? For Sa Such questions, which have no easy answers, come up in any attempt to calls t interpret the poem. What we have are contrasts. differences. First, sign
Much the same could be said of dance'and'suppose. What dance means here depends on what we contrast it with dancing around'as opposed to'proceeding directly or as opposed to remaining still)and 'suppose' is opposed to know. Thinking about the meaning of this and s air poem is a matter of working with oppositions or differences, giving of them content, extrapolating from them