The Inefficacy of Language
When Roland Barthes said “the Author is dead” (in the appropriately named “Death of the Author”) he was refering to a stanza of…oh crap, Bahktin I think, where the voice behind the words was not that of a character, or even the author, but that of the reader. It was in this moment that he realized that the Author said nothing. Every written word is just black ink on white paper until someone reads it. And when they DO, they upply all of their own understanding, and none of the Authors. Thus, it is the reader who gives meaning to the written word, not the Author.
Think I’m full of it? Well I’ll show you what I am talking about.
I didn’t steal your car
Simple sentence with at least five possible implications. Let us examine them.
To begin with, place the emphasis on “I”
I didn’t steal your car. This implies that someone may have stolen it, but not me.
Next,
I didn’t steal your car. Now maybe no-one stole it. Who knows? This is a slight variation on the previous interpretation.
Three,
I didn’t steal your car. I took it, but it wasn’t stealing. See what’s happening?
Four,
I didn’t steal your car. Someone’s yes, but not your’s.
Finally,
I didn’t steal your car. Maybe your truck, or your money but not your car.
Five different ways that a simple sentence can be interpretted, each contingent on the reader’s emphasis.
Barthes didn’t stop at the written word. He, and later theorists like Foucault and Derrida, said that communication is impossible, words have no meaning.
Boat. There, think of a boat. I am thinking of one right now. How long is yours? Mine is 14 feet. How many sails does yours have? None? An Engine!!! Oh man. Mine has two sails.
See, I say boat and you imagine a boat. Your instinct is to assume that when I say boat, then what you imagine a boat to be is what I mean by boat. But it definately is not. The thing is, this idea was contemporary and mind blowing seventy five years ago, reached full gestation fifty years ago, and now we are so influenced by it that we don’t even acknowledge it anymore. It’s understood that we don’t understand.
I think that’s why we love it so much when an author comes along who seems to speak our language. We start to think that maybe communication IS possible. For me it’s two writers, Douglas Coupland for speaking my language, and Hermann Hesse for writing stories that could be my story.
Who does it for you?
1 Comment
[...] A post called The Inefficiencey of Language caught my attention today. The post was about the locus of meaning in texts, and whether meaning is in the words or in the mind of the reader. Jacob Murphy’s little demonstration of the variability of possible interpretations of a simple statement demonstrated the problems we have in making assumptions about whether, or how, our students are comprehending anything. I wonder if the education corollary to the literary assertion “the Author is dead” might read, “the Teacher is dead?” [...]