Meaning of meaning

Dear Linguistics Students &
Colleagues Across the Curriculum

The word SEMANTICS refers to SEED, as does
seminary,seminar, semen, semiotic: all carrying
the meaning of MEANING: sign, seal, signal,
significance--if not deliverance..


Consider the word "meaning,"
Then consider the "MEANING" of meaning.
What is the difference between the 2 words?
Well, then: what is the relationship between them?

So, what? What is the significance?

You might think “MEANING” should be, glamorous
and I agree. Don't we think of MEANING in personal
self-fulfilling terms of desire, yes? What's meaningless,
I mostly ignore. And I also turn-up the feeling that
MEANING is personal.

Common sense meaning and meaning-in-common
does not catch or carry the glow with which I
normally say Oh—that was so meaningful. Etc.

But here we are dealing with meaning in the
fundamentalist reductive sense ofDIFFERENCE
and more importantly (more meaningfully) a
difference that MAKES a DIFFERENCE (as opposed
to all the differences that make nodifference as far as
I’m concerned, or we’re concerned.

So you see, we need to think about MEANING as
having 2 parts:

1) the DESCRIPTIVE part...... 2) the evaluative or “ethical”
literally: aesthetic – the “the”........ part which places positive or
in aesthetic means the VIEW......... negative VALUE on a difference
& so aestheticism is literally............ so that it is not just a difference
descriptive: look, look, look............. (descriptively), but a difference
see, see, see,...................................that convention/culture/tradition
That’s fundamental aestheticism......& common sense sees as significant

MAKING A DIFFERENCE that makes a
difference damnit & not just a difference.

The word-PLAY on “DIFFERENCE” and how it is a different
difference depending on what hierarchical “level” we are
using/abusing it—is worth your consideration,

because it is typical of the dubious, double-ness of
language-in-use: that it can both clarify and confuse,
depending on the linguistic SAVVY of the user/abuser.

ERROR and PLAY go hand in hand: contra-diction and
paradox: got to love them both or I'm screwed! The play
of “DIFFERENCE” demonstrates how the hierarchical
and contextual levels in communication compensate for
the inadequacy of words to indicate the fullness of
expression, converse-action, communication so that
the ATTITUDE and RECEPTIVITY for the players is
always crucial to the making of shared meaning..
*******
Chapter 5 is much more fundamental: describing,
or rather representing a kind ofMEANING going on
beneath our conscious use of language: what regulates
meaning of words (lexical meaning): noun meaning, verb
meaning, & sentence meaning in GENERAL: rules and
structures that underlie and generate and support
all our talk.

It’s uncanny, if not seemingly unnatural, to think of
rules and structures responsiblefor the surface of talk
going on: can you imagine being in conversation with
someone, aware of the nouns and verbs, phrases and
clauses, the various general THEMATIC archetypes
of Agent, Theme, Location, Goal, Source, Instrument,
Experience-er, Cause, Possession that are In PLAY as
the speakers speak? Of the Truth Conditions, the
Event/Status—the differences between Statement
Question Command Expressiongoing on. The Pragmatics:
the hierarchical organization and play of meaning in the
context of the sentence itself, the social situation?

Can you imagine playing basketball—or watching—with
a full sense of the rules and structures and contextual
situational demands of the game-going-on? Skiing
with a sense of anatomy & it’s role? Walking in the woods
with an awareness of autonomic function: respiration,
central nervous system transactions…?

We normally don’t use the word MEANING (or semantics)
to refer to these automatic and close-to-un-conscious aspects
of our living experience which in fact DOMINATE us and
our actions and decisions, true?

Someone once said our CONSCIOUS-ness is only the
tip of the iceberg. Someone else insisted: no, our
Consciousness is only a snowball on the tip
of the I’s berg.

What we consciously call MEANING and meaningful
significant and symbolic is easily swamped and
overwhelmed as we begin to inquire and
investigate and probe and analyze the
nature of the “rules” and hierarchical
“structures” that provide the ongoing
foundation of our snowball antic,
say.

It’s as if we move around in a bubble of collective and individual
consciousness we don’t even suspect is a bubble—sealed-in to
its own arbitrary terms of shared significance. So it’s painful &
awkward to think out of the bubble. Maybe not even possible.
C
Plato called it a Cave. A Closet. A Convention
A Culture. A consciousness.

“The man is clapped into jail by his consciousness,”
says Emerson, aware that our MEANING confines
as it defines, & it’s light obscures the darkness which
contains the possibilities beyond our conscious notion
of “impossible.”