17.3. Does the Notion of Meaning Still Have a Meaning?
I remarked earlier that it is still a moot point whether or not semantics is concerned with the meaning of words (sense 1). It would appear that all we need do is pass from sense 1 to the subsequent meanings to accept that semantics is still concerned with meaning. It is arguable, however, whether the notion of meaning still enjoys citizenship rights in sense 3 (for some—for instance Quine—meaning can be shelved as long as one has a good theory of reference). Most interestingly, it is also debatable whether the notion of meaning (at least in the sense of a meaning conventionally agreed—sense 1) still has citizenship rights in sense 5. So long as, apropos of sense 5, we have in mind Greimas, in whom a generative semantics of texts is preceded by a structural semantics, there is no reason for this suspicion. But deconstructionists and Davidsonians, or those like Sperber and Wilson who subscribe to the theory of inference, can also be subsumed under sense 5.
Here meaning itself is called into question. In the case of Derrida, the denial of so-called transcendental meaning seems to be directed rather at the single meaning of a text (which he certainly calls into question) while sense 1 is not in question. In his De la grammatologie (Of Grammatology) he declares that, without the tools of criticism and traditional philology (including, I presume, dictionaries), interpretation could take off in any direction and consider itself authorized to say whatever it liked. Only he adds that this indispensable guardrail protects but does not initiate a reading, and he is evidently convinced that existing grammars and dictionaries are sufficient to protect a reading.
In the case of Davidson and the various theories of inference, he chooses to ignore the fact that terms have meanings fixed by the community (the ones provided by dictionaries) because what counts is that I take for granted that anyone speaking to me sees the world as I see it and intends to say what I would say in the same circumstances. It would therefore seem irrelevant that a boat be designated as a “boat,” because if someone were to say to me “Let’s get on that wagon,” pointing to a boat, I would understand, through the principle of charity, that he meant to refer to the boat and I don’t go splitting hairs about the “conventional” meaning of the terms.
The example, however, presupposes that all there is in front of us a boat, and not a boat and a wagon, and that the direction in which I am pointing is unambiguous. In the latter case, and in the absence of any further circumstantial indicators, if the speaker says “Let’s get on that wagon,” I understand that he wants to get on the wagon and not on the boat. This is a consequence of the fact that social and linguistic conventions assign two different meanings to the words “boat” and “wagon” independently of any context or act of charity. Of course, out of a principle of charity that, under the circumstances, would be tantamount to a “principle of malevolence,” I could always assume that the person speaking had a selection disturbance and said “wagon” whenever he meant “boat,” but we do not usually push the malevolence principle that far. We assume that there is a semantics in sense 1 involved, in which words have a certain meaning independently of any specific context.
Note that not even Davidson denies this evidence—see “Communication and Convention” (Davidson 1984b)—in which he asks himself if we need a convention to tie every word to a fixed meaning for all speakers, and assumes, as a condition of the existence of a convention, the position of Lewis, which is clearly more valid for poker than for languages. At this point Davidson realizes that we can even understand terms we are not familiar with and decides that all conventions are useful but not necessary. The argument is that we simply tend to speak like everyone else—and this would shift the problem of the existence of a code to that of consistency of usage.
To be quite frank, this strikes me as merely playing with words. Saying that we regularly associate the word “boat” with a floating vessel and saying that the code establishes that a boat is a floating vessel doesn’t change much. In fact when linguists speak of a code they are speaking of a statistical extrapolation from common usage: the code de la langue that De Saussure talked about is a fiction based on consistency of usage.
Otherwise, it would be like saying that it is not true that the penal code establishes that whoever kills someone else must serve x number of years in prison, but that “usually” (that is, as a rule) whoever kills someone else gets x number of years in prison. If this were the only difference between Roman Law and Common Law, what we would have is identical conventions. The difference is that, in order to decide what is customary, Common Law, has recourse, not to a rule fixed once and for all, but to the precedent set by a previous case.
Now, Davidson does not deny that there are conventions according to which a “boat” always signifies a floating vessel; he simply decides that this is a marginal or obvious case (obvious because it is marginal and marginal because it is obvious), and he prefers to give his attention to the more dramatic cases. The dramatic cases are when we use the word “boat” to indicate something other than a floating vessel. The most convincing example, of course, is that of metaphor (think of the example of “sauce boat”). But we cannot build a theory of a language on its use of metaphor, unless it be to say that the meaning of all linguistic terms is originally metaphorical—and I do not believe this was Davidson’s intent.
The confusion lies in demonstrating that what is dramatic is normal and what is normal marginal, whereas in science the dramatic cases are always used as marginal examples to demonstrate that the normal cases are not as simple as we think. True, the principle that the exception confirms the rule is scientifically infantile (something proved by Popper’s falsificationist theory, according to which an exception calls the rule into question), but to state, as humorist Achille Campanile does, that “rules made up entirely of exceptions are rules fully confirmed,” is to state a paradox, and it is equally paradoxical to claim that the exception constitutes the rule. The rule for defining a rule, in the human sciences, is that it must allow for a number of exceptions, but that they must be controllable, that is to say, predictable. In the physical sciences, either all bodies fall according to the laws of gravity or, if only one body does not, the laws of gravity must be called into question. In the human sciences, on the other hand, the statistical rule is that the majority of human beings come together in heterosexual congress in order to procreate (otherwise our number would not have increased from two to six billion in a matter of fifty years), but this does not exclude the fact that some human beings choose not to procreate, which allows us to include Catholic priests and homosexuals among human beings.
Were it true that there is no such thing as meaning in the sense of sense 1, we would have no end of trouble understanding each other, and in fact, Davidson, though through gritted teeth, has never defended this thesis. What we may be sure of is that, in terms of sense 5, the principle of charity theory must be taken very seriously. It is then that we discover that Davidson, by suggesting that he is contesting sense 1 (which he nevertheless presupposes) and seeming to place in discussion, for purely academic reasons, senses 3 and 4, was in fact proposing the principles of the semantics in sense 5—in other words, a semantics not of terms, or of sentences, but of texts. From the lexicographic point of view, Davidson seems to be denying the evidence, but from the point of view of a theory of textual interpretation he is a fairly sane person, or—though he is not aware of it—someone with something serious to say about the interpretation of the meaning of texts (texts that, on top of everything else, produced as they are in complex situations, are always multimedia; made up, in other words, of words, demonstrative and deictic gestures, paralinguistic elements, and maybe even hypoiconic supports).
Allow me to remind you of a well-known example of Ducrot’s. The expression je suis le rognon (“I am the kidney”), uttered by a human being, is false (from the point of view of senses 3 and 4), but, when said in the context of a restaurant, accompanied by a gesture first pointing to the dish in the waiter’s hand and then to the speaker himself, it signifies unequivocally that the speaker is affirming that he is the one who ordered the kidney and not the one who ordered the sirloin steak.
17.4. The Identification of Meaning and Synonymy
In order to deny that semantics makes sense in sense 1, to affirm, that is, that words do not have meanings agreed upon by convention, it is customary to employ a quite fallacious argument. Meaning is identified with synonymy. Philosophers of language are more responsible for this fallacy than lexicographers. No sensible person versed in
