Reading Novels

15. Words and Meanings

213 15 Words and Meanings A novel is a finite text and contains a finite number of words. What can we gain simply from examination of the words it contains? In ordinary circumstances we often assume that words considered on their own have fixed and stable meanings. We isolate the words we use for objects and translate them into other languages. We give definitions of single words in dictionaries. We use single words as titles for texts (like Kipling’s “If” or Henry Green’s Caught). We use “key words” to sum up ideas in culture (like “the picturesque”). But our common assumptions do not bear much examination. Word-for-word translation between languages turns out in practice to produce nonsense; dictionaries are notoriously unsatisfying (they can never decide whether they should be just telling us how to use a word, or giving us information about the concept referred to by the word—or how much information we are likely to need). And single-word titles or key words can only be understood by those who already know the context. Words, we can say, bring a potential for meaning. They can be identified as the same in different contexts—but the “initiative of meaning” passes over finally to the sentence and to the text. We must always be conscious, then, of what Paul Ricoeur calls the “reciprocal interplay between the word and the sentence”—and the text.1 Polysemy We think we know what we mean by a word, but most of the words we use, perhaps all, are polysemous (they can have many meanings), and we reading novels 214 only know which meaning is relevant when we know the context. For instance, a “duck” may be a bird, or a score in the game of cricket, or a nod of the head, or (in British English) a term of endearment. The meaning is usually plain when the word is used—though if someone simply shouts “Duck!” at us from a distance, it is not always obvious what is meant. The context of use produces constraints on meaning. Once we are given a context, we are able to dismiss irrelevant possibilities. Evelyn Waugh’s Officers and Gentlemen (1955) describes the arrival of a course at a banquet : “At this moment the piper put an end to the conversation. He was followed by the butler bearing a huge joint which he set before the host” (bk. 1, chap. 7). “Joint” here does not refer to marijuana. The word may be used in that way in modern English, but (apart from the fact that other sentences make plain that it refers to a piece of meat) it was not used with such a meaning in British English in 1955. Only by moving the sentence to a different context could it be read in such a way. Distinctions, however, are not always so clear. When we read in a Raymond Carver story: “Sandy’s husband had been on the sofa ever since he’d been terminated three months ago” (“Preservation” [1983]), the context makes fairly plain that terminate refers to losing his job, but the use of the word as a euphemism for killing, or the more abstract sense of “brought to an end,” are difficult to dismiss from our minds, especially when we read that “he’d come home looking pale and scared.” There is no point in trying to specify what the word really means. The word has a potential for different meanings, and whether we consider those meanings seriously or not will depend on whether we are prepared to accept other possible contexts. In this case, the fact that it is a literary text predisposes us to play with possible (and perhaps unintended) meanings, which seem to have some relevance to the wider context. Monosemy It is the aim of certain kinds of discourse to restrict possible meanings to a single meaning, and thus to suggest monosemy. Science aims to give precise definitions of words, limiting them in this way: the law tries (fruitlessly ) to construct firm limits to the use of terms like murder or tort. In literature, polysemy and monosemy may intersect in an interesting way, as when the discourse of science or law intrudes into the world of a novel. In Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, a novel that plays with sensational adventures and their recounting in different styles, the hero is offered a [18.219.22.169] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 04:06...