I'VE BEEN STRUCK LATELY BY a common pattern in religious and political circles—a basic misunderstanding about the nature of language.
In both fields there's often talk of the "literal" meaning of a text.
With the impending confirmation of a Supreme Court justice, we hear the clamoring complaints that a judge should not interpret the law, but should simply enforce the "letter" of the law.
At the same time, I've been following online discussions about the meanings of Biblical texts, in which some of the parties argue that only a "literal" interpretation is valid.
In both cases there's a bit of fuzziness, a lack of understanding of how language actually works, of how meaning is conveyed through words. In both, there's an assumption that everyone knows what the "literal" meaning is, and that anything else is "metaphorical" or "analogical", and beneath our notice.
I'm going to suggest that "literal" meanings, in the sense that they are normally thought of, as opposed to analogical or metaphorical meanings, do not even exist. I'm going to try to convince you that the meanings we call literal, even in the simplest, everyday, language, are themselves analogical, and closer to metaphor than we realize.
More to the point, I want to point out why anyone who is really concerned with the original meaning of a text does not want to make the mistake of interpreting it in the way that literalists would like.
But before I go any further, I want to ease any anxiety I've raised by offering a few disclaimers:
- Contrary to some, I believe that there is something that can be called the original meaning of a text—the meaning that would have been understood by its author and his or her original audience.
Sometimes that meaning is clear and singular, sometimes it's fuzzy or ambiguous, as it was when it was first uttered. - I believe that the original meaning, or a reasonable approximation, can often be discovered—even when the text is from another century.
Even when it can't be discovered, we can often find very good clues which will put limits on what a text could have meant. - However, as you will see, I am also convinced that in many cases the meaning that people want to call "literal" is not that original meaning, or even a close approximation to it.
So if you are worried that I'm going to lead you into a liberal wilderness where all meanings are relative, or merely fictional, you can relax. My purpose is much more mundane.
Let me give a simple example:
The state vegetable of New Jersey is the tomato, but in Ohio the tomato is the state fruit. Arkansas sits on the fence—it's declared the tomato to be both the Arkansas state vegetable and the Arkansas state fruit.
Why the confusion?
Almost anyone would agree that both the terms "vegetable" and "fruit", as well as the term "tomato" are being used literally on both sides of the debate. And almost anyone would agree that we all know what a tomato is, and that we all know what a vegetable is. So why the disagreement?
The answer is that all language, not just metaphor, is fundamentally analogical. All language is about how things are alike, or different. All language is a matter of "like" and "as".
We all know what the word tomato means. It means all of the ways in which all of the tomatoes we have ever seen, tasted, peeled, or juiced are alike. And it means all the ways in which they are different from other fruits and vegetables.
A word is the name of an analogy—in this case, the analogy between all of our previous "tomato experiences". When we see something like a tomato, we compare it to that analogy, to our built up experience of "tomato-ness", and we decide whether it fits or not. If it does, we call it a tomato.
But analogies have a hierarchical structure, as well.
And I'll go into that next time...
