the locus of textual meaning

I'm trying to get a bead on what constitutes the locus of textual meaning. What determines what a text means or doesn't mean? E.D. Hirsch wants to say that a text means whatever an author intended it to mean, plain and simple. Stanley Fish, if I remember correctly, thinks that the meaning of a text is whatever it does to a careful and competent reader. There are, of course, various and sundry other views of which I have only a sketchy, second-hand knowledge.

Now, I've never inclined much towards views that want to do away with what the author intended to communicate when speaking about meanings of texts. That the author's intention for her text is a (if not the) determiner of text's meaning has always struck me as just common sense.

But it's more complicated than Hirsch thinks. Whatever Alanis Morisette may have intended for the lyrics of "Ironic," none of them were instances of irony (at least not for the reasons Morisette thought).

Perhaps a better example would be a radio operator frantically trying to signal 'SOS' but repeatedly typing "...----..". Whatever he intends, the radio operator is saying to the world "SOD" over and over again. His intention does not seem sufficient to make "...----.." mean 'SOS' and certainly not sufficient to get him rescued.

But why? The reason "...----.." doesn't mean 'SOS' even though that's what the radio operator intends to communicate is not because of some sort of autonomy of the signal. It is, rather, because the signal is constrained by the rules or conventions of morse code. Given the rules of morse code, "...----.." can only mean 'SOD'. So it would seem that the meaning of the signal depends not just on the intention of the operator but on the operator's successfully encoding his intention into the signal.

If we think of a language as basically being a very complex (and transient!) code (a model which Umberto Eco seems to think is helpful), then may we say that the meaning of a bit of writing or speech depends upon the speaker or writer successfully encoding her intended message into the writing or speech, with success being determined by the (sometimes flexible, unspoken, and/or informal) rules of that language's grammar, literary conventions, idioms, etc. (i.e., the rules of that language's "code")?

Thoughts? Feelings? Snide remarks, anyone?

Spinal Tap reunites for LiveEarth '07

Watch Marty DiBergi as he brings David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls, and Nigel Tufnel together again to fight global warming. This is Spinal Tap.

Many thanks to the Foolish-Sage for directing me to this video.

on digesting and Hades

The trouble with undertaking a Sisyphusian task like digesting when you're a Neo-Calvinist is that the whole time you are digesting, you are acutely aware that there is work of eternal value and redeeming benefit to be done in the world. Some tasks are more meaningful than others in a universe that has the potential for and promise of one day being bathed in the sacred incandescence of God's glory. But the flip side is that there are tasks that are less meaningful as well; tasks that have no discernible redeeming (or pedagogical value), like rolling a boulder repeatedly up a hill...or digesting. At times like these, the belief of atheistic existentialists that all tasks are alike pointless and the universe is ultimately absurd might begin to sound somewhat appealing. But since it would probably be unwise to abandon my belief in God just to make digesting more palatable, I, unlike Camus' Sisyphus, can hardly smile about my present task.

BREAKING NEWS

Our correspondent in the field, Mark Traphagen, has the story.