As a student at High School and possibly as an (un)fortunate (depending on your viewpoint) Univeristy Student studying English you have undoubtedly encountered the mysterious word .
Of this pool of students, it would not be an understatement to suggest that less than 5% actually understand what is meant or communicated by this word! This is extremely disturbing considering our communication with each-other revolves around each of us having a clear understanding of what the other is saying.
English teachers often ask questions like:
meaning”What is the ’meaning’ of the text?”
”How is the ’meaning’ created in the text”
”What is the ’meaning’ represented through *insert technique*?”
Etc. Etc. Etc
A significant contributing factor to my own drastic improvement in English from Year 11 to Year 12 was a commitment to understanding what the jargon words of English like Meaning, Purpose, Representation, Analysis meant in the context of literary Analysis. For now, we will just be going through meaning, but in the coming weeks you will see clear links and significant interplay between all these words!
Meaning is simply what is portrayed/represented/conveyed/interpreted/developed/created IN and THROUGH a text. IN a text are the themes that you see developed through the characters, plot and Textual Type. THROUGH a text is the conclusions and message you draw from the Text as a whole.
For example: In Shakespeare’s Hamlet we see themes of Corruption, Revenge, Supernatural, Deception and Loyalty – this is meaning IN a text. Whereas the meaning we interpret THROUGH the text is something about Human Nature – one aspect being our ability to act out what we say or not and why we have an inevitable ‘delay’ or ‘pause’ between our thought and deed.
Meaning is a two-way street. It is both the ‘messages’ that can be UNDERSTOOD by the Responder (reader/audience/listener) of the text. However it is also the ‘messages’ being ‘sent’ (conveyed/portrayed) by the Composer to the Responder. The tricky thing is that often, these two ‘messages’ are different because unlike spoken language we do not have the context surrounding why, when or how something was said (this is why we look at context in English, to get closer to the Composer’s Meaning). This is also why we have disagreeing literary critics – we need to make sure we are not interpreting the message wrongly.
The way in which the Responder interpreted meaning and the Composer conveys meaning is the same – going back to the street analogy – they both follow the same “road rules”. These rules are three-fold.
1. Textual Form 2. Textual Features specific to the form 3. Language
But Alas, we have run out of time! Next week we will look at what these three rules are and how to Analyse them!
Until then, if you would like a post on any topic of English, comment on the blog below!!