The Meaning of Meaning

Because of course all my Summit friends aren't over-loaded with school, or brain-fried with lectures, or exhausted with their families. We opted to review...right?

"Alright, my topic is the Meaning of Meaning.
"We all know that Ideas have...?"

"Consequences," we replied in attempted unison.

"And bad ideas have bad consequences," Michael Bauman added, doubling our perception of the first idea.

A few kids began twirling their pens. Most of us sat and tried to wrap our heads around that in the two seconds before our lecturer used those statements as the foundation for his hour's argument.

He launched.
We gulped.

"This guy's terrible," the guy next to me warned in a whisper.
"Whaaa?" I raised an eyebrow.
"He'll throw out a question and then take the opposite position you take."
"Oh. Um, I don't like arguments like that." And that determined me to just sit this one out and glean what I could from others.

"My other point is that sloppy language makes sloppy thought possible. But back to the first point.
"When you read a book who determines what it means? Do you determine the meaning, or does the author?"

"Well you do."
I glanced at the kid. Not if I have anything to say about it! I thought.

Seriously? As a writer, that's quite defeating! I write my opinion on several things. And if each reader is free to take the words I write and turn them into anything they want to hear, it completely negates the purpose of writing in the first place!

I sat a little on edge, mentally daring somebody to agree with him. But at the same time, fear nibbled my mind. If words I write can mean anything, then they will never truly say what I want them to; not only would it completely cancel out the purpose of writing, but I could be accused of so many false ideas. Writers would be stripped of their influence over culture. Meanings could be twisted to support any position on anything.

And isn't this exactly where people covertly begin to destroy positive influence and ideas? By undermining meaning. People who take away meaning can convince you to question everything from their bias of meaninglessness. And to those who learn this teaching innocently, it even makes sense.

It can't be true though. If somebody is telling you that meaning is only interpretation, then you are quite free to interpret that to mean anything. Even that meaning only means the author's intent. People who teach this twisted view want to be the exception to this philosophy. And so it doesn't work.

"Ok. Secondly, sloppy thought makes sloppy language possible. Case in point. Let us consider hypothetically that Jill has a very clear idea about R. Jill decides to write a book about R. She chooses her words carefully, and is very specific with her language. Her book is published and Jack picks it up. He reads carefully, following the author's intent. And when Jack has finished reading the book, the ideas about R that Jill had are successfully and accurately communicated to Jack.
"However! Maybe Jill was a sloppy thinker. Perhaps she didn't bother to ponder R enough to get a clear picture of it. Moreover, when she wrote, she used a "hand grenade" style of writing (thank you for the quote, Michael Bauman) and chose words that roughly described her already-shaky R. Jack can read this two ways. If Jack is a sloppy reader, he may be so confused by Jill's disorganized thoughts in disorganized writing that he gets a shaky picture of S instead of R.

"Or perhaps, Jack is a good reader and he thinks what a stupid author."

"Our world was spoken into existence; language is at the core of our world. You have to get the words right."