October 1, 2012

Meanings

The interdeterminance of words and their context has been something we have been following in class for a while. Unfortunately after these past readings its seems all too similar. To determine the meaning by its surrounding context was in fact, identifying its differences and similarities, but to place their meaning originally through such system seems difficult. "Throughout almost all our life we are treating things as signs. All experience, using the word in its widest possible sense, is either enjoyed or interpreted or both, and very little of it escapes some degree of interpretation." (1270) It was almost elementary, to grasp a thing we identify with an object and to understand abstract we use metaphor to arrive at similarities and differences between things we already know. Then, Richards says: "meaning is rhetorical, they conclude, because language is 'an instrument for the promotion of purspose' and not simply 'a means of symbolizing references.'" (1271). So now I cant seem to understand what the purpose is. Meaning is the instrument by which what purpose is being accomplished? We said passing on information, obtaining knowledge all of these things are our purpose for using language. We symbolize all references in order to perform all those purposes, how can it stand alone?

The line that tied up all the loose ends came when I read, "the root of the trouble will be traced to the superstition that words are in someway parts of the things or always imply things corresponding to them, historical instances of this still potent instinctive belief being given from many sources" (1276). It's through the promise of difference in culture, or in time that solidifies context as the lead dictionary. It is here where metaphors between things that have been and are can be compared to define something we may not know. It is the idea that things simply are that limits us.

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