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