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Words are vocal sounds. Vocal sounds are meaningful.
Joseph Gilbert
On Jun 6, 2011, at 9:15 PM, Tony Whitson wrote:
Peirce explicitly contended that the meaning of any sign (including words,
thoughts, arguments, feelings, or whatever), _qua_ signs, lies in the
virtuality of potential future interpretations (just by virtue of the
fundamental nature of what it is to be a sign, i.e., in the activity of
sign-relations).
Also, notice that I'm using "meaning" as something that we -- and our
words, thoughts, etc. -- DO, not something they contain, convey, etc. I
recently noticed similar usage in the title of Jay's MCA review of Sfard's
book, which speaks of "Meaning Mathematically," not "mathematical
meaning." The latter locution could mean the same as Jay's, but it also
would allow the more familiar reading of "meaning" as a noun. If we need
to begin meaning differently than how we might be heard to mean in
positivist discourse, I think we need to begin choosing speaking that
resists assimilation to that discourse.
On Mon, 6 Jun 2011, mike cole wrote:
The poem is neat and your explication brings to mind a recurrent thought
when I encounter the core idea of "the thought is completed in the
word." I
(think I) know what LSV and Mandelshtam are saying, but I always have
this
thought that the thought is not yet completed, not in so far as it is
taken
up, perhaps transformed, and comes back again at a later time, in some
new,
albeit related, form, to begin that side of the cycle over again.
mike
On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:
I clipped the wrong line from Martin's post in that last message. I
meant
the Dickinson verse in reponse to the line that now appears below from
Martin.
In Dickinson's verse, what's not timeless is not merely the meaning
that a
word does as a lexical unit in a language (i.e., in the philological
sense),
but even in a specific utterance the word spoken continues meaning, as
it
continues living, non-timelessly.
On Sun, 1 May 2011, Tony Whitson wrote:
On Tue, 26 Apr 2011, Martin Packer wrote:
For LSV word-meaning is not timeless. It changes over time; he didn't
study philology for nothing!
A word is dead
When it is said
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
--Emily Dickinson
I find it helpful to think of meaning as something that words do --
not
something they contain, convey, etc.
Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK DE 19716
twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________
"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
-- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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__________________________________________
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xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
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Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK DE 19716
twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________
"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
-- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
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