Below is a note from Kate that I think has some very good points to consider. Points about how and whether we mean, and how our course environment effects the status and depth of our exchanges. Thanks, Kate.
let’s talk some more about language. the mere fact that we can sit in a room at a university and debate the meaning of this word or that word proves that words have more than one meaning. words mean more than one thing to one person, any given word could have any number of “accepted” definitions that you could look up in any number of dictionaries (which, by the way, are just books written by people, and are only an “authority” if you defer to them. i personally choose to look at a dictionary as a tool, and not an “authority”). you can layer on top of these “accepted” definitions of words the slang definitions that have entered our vernacular, and then on top of that the personal definitions that each person may associate with a word given her personal truth/experience/perspective.
which brings us to pairs or trios of words, phrases, words compound meaning when they are chained together. any word tied to another word changes the meaning of the original word, yes, even a word as insignificant as an indefinite article such as “the” or “a.” the difference between “text” and “a text” may be meaningless and irrelevant to some, but to me (and to others, i am sure) there is a subtle and useful distinction there: “text” refers to any text and all text, literally words that are printed, but “a text” is a tad more specific, it refers to in its most literal sense a specific book, a specific collection of text lined up and printed in a specific way. yes, literal definitions are useful, but i do not live in a world determined by literalness (which, may or may not be an “accepted” word, i don’t feel like referencing a dictionary at the moment, but ms word doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. how about literality? i think that has a better sound). defining “a text” in broader terms takes into account the myriad ways that people consume things. my experience has brought “a text” to mean something bigger than words on a page, at this point “a text” could be almost anything that one chooses to examine and interpret. yes, i said almost anything, from your dirty sock to the soliloquy you may torture your classmates with, neither of which are printed on any page, and both of which have a lot of juicy bits we could pull out and examine.
and now here we are with thoughts. there are a lot of theorists out there, as i am sure you all are well aware. they’ve been thinking and thinking for centuries, churning out a wealth of texts for us to consume and interpret and then integrate into our lives. we all do it, otherwise we probably wouldn’t be in this class. i know that you’ve read a lot of books; i know that you have a lot of thoughts about all these books that you’ve read…so what are they? i’m not interested in continually re-hashing what so and so said about this idea or that idea, that sounds to me like living in a continual past. i am looking to push beyond that and create something new because you know what? WE CAN DO THAT. that is why i am going to school, to equip myself with the ideas of the theorists that came before me in order to make my own theories. who says i have to graduate before i can start that? so, let’s do that, and while we’re at it, how about some new definitions of words? and maybe even some new words.