[E. Albright]

Originally posted by Krsqk:
That's fine and all, coming from a deconstructionist, but some of us ordinary people believe that once upon a time, words had meanings. Furthermore, in the past, there were books called dictionaries which sought to solidify the meaning of words, instead of aid in the progression (or digression) of their meanings, as seems to be popular today.

Do you really believe that Last line? It is now extremely popular (and I'm speaking as a Yank here) to view dictionaries as Bibles (if you'll pardon the expression) and meanings as fixed and certain. 'Tis my experience that Americans in particular have this lovely idea that Languages are fixed, static and standardized, when the bloody things are living, dynamic and diverse. For example, how many times have you heard the phrase "standard English"? How often do you hear people in the States talking about dialects of English? Maybe it's just me, maybe it's just Ohio, but I've found that Americans tend to view dialects as funny accents + bad grammer ("They'uns talk funny o'er yonder!"). Dictionaries are an attempt to standardize language and to clarify meaning, but they ultimately can, will and must fail. There are as many idiolects of English as there are speakers of English; so tell me, which of these hundreds of millions of ideolects represents the real, correct English? Speaking as a teacher of English as a second language, I constently find myself wondering if I use words "right", or if I'm misleading my students as to what connotations and denotations are generally attatched to this or that word. Given that my students have been learning British English, and I come from the other side of the pond, I find that I often don't. I had a lot less sympathy for the idea that language is neither unambiguous nor fixed before learning to speak another language, let alone before I started trying to teach my own.

But I rant digressively. My point are this: a claim that, because langauge is precise enough for ordinary usage, the fact that it's vague and underspecified is irrelevant, essentially sidesteps the question of whether it is too vague and/or sufficently specified for extraordinary use. And I dare say that claiming that one knows exactly what God means because one read what some person transcribed for Him qualifies as rather extraordinary. This would suggest that one can obtain objective meaning after two subjective interpretations (assuming that God, at least, doesn't have these same problems that we'uns do). Um, ouch. And if you want to argue that I've made a double standard, that I'm being less rigourous with ordinary language, I assure you I'm not. I personally hope quite sincerly that this statement communicates the "message" that I intend to communicate, but I freely admit that I've no assurance that it shall...

Oh, and re: dictionaries, and our having of them in the past... Don't forget that dictionaries are a relatively newfangled invention; English dictionaries have been around for less than 400 years, and have been used as standardizing agents a goodly sight less than that. IIRC, 'twas in the 1800's with 'ole Noah Webster that the notion of dictionary as repository of standardized truth came into force, deplacing the idea of dictionary as reference of current linguistic usage...

It is reasonable to assume that the Bible translators in particular, and authors in general, used words that directly communicated their intent, in keeping with the established meanings of those words. In short (Short? Do I know what short means? }, I think that lack of 100% certainty (where rounding up to 100% is not permitted) is not reason for discounting the probability of successfully interpreting a text.

So tell me, what level of confidence is necessary for successfully interpreting the meaning of life, the universe and everything (aside from the ability to multiply nine and six)? You wanna round this up, yes? Okay, then if we're rounding up, you need, what, at least 50% percent comprehension, right? And on this level of precision you want to assert that you know the Nature of All Things?

All's I'm saying is that, given your claims of literal Biblical interpretation I feel justified in demanding a bit more rigor in terms of textual interpretation. And this is leaving the issue of translation entirely to one side. Ye gods! That's two more layers of interpretation between you and the author's intent; are you really willing to blithly assert said words "directly [ communicate ] their intent, in keeping with [ their ] established meanings"?

Oh, and the "established" meanings of words, these would be what? Are we going to assert that it's the dictionaries? Can we be sure that the translators agreed with the dictionaries, especially early ones (KJV comes to mind, published, what, seven years after the first English dictionary)? Did they look all the words up, to make sure they "agreed"? Did they "properly" understand the meaning of the definition?

And pray tell, what exactly is it to directly communicate a word's intent, hmm?

E. Albright
(Slightly testy after spending a day trying to approximately communicate meaning to a bunch of French high school students...)

[ Edit: typos; I apparently can't even unambiguously communicate with my keyboard... ]

[ December 16, 2002, 17:22: Message edited by: E. Albright ]