While driving my son to school one morning he asked me: "Dad, what is the meaning of meaning?"
I hesitated, reflected on his question for a while. He thought he had stumped me.
"Meaning," I finally said, "is what words stand for. It is the idea or object that is being characterized by the use of a word or group of words."
I knew I was losing him. Finally, I said, "meaning is the idea or object that we want to express or convey whenever we use a word or group of words."
Didn't help either.
I knew my son actually knew the meaning of "meaning." He just wanted to know if I really had an answer for his every question.
Since that morning, I have thought off and on about his question. What, indeed, is the meaning of "meaning"? I googled the word. Here's what I found:
There's a book titled "The Meaning of Meaning," authored by C.K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. The late I. A. Richards just happened to be one hell of a literary critic. The book is a classic semanticists' delight, something worthy of perhaps the greatest semanticist of the English language, the late S. I. Hayakawa.
Nothing will beat a dictionary definition, however, because every dictionary definition takes into account all the known meanings of a word.
From Dictionary.com
mean·ing
[mee-ning] Show IPA
–noun
1.
what is intended to be, or actually is, expressed or indicated; signification; import: the three meanings of a word.
2.
the end, purpose, or significance of something: What is the meaning of life? what is the meaning of this intrusion?
3.
Linguistics .
a.
the nonlinguistic cultural correlate, reference, or denotation of a linguistic form; expression.
b.
linguistic content ( opposed to expression).
–adjective
4.
intentioned (usually used in combination): She's a well-meaning person.
5.
full of significance; expressive: a meaning look.
Like most words, the word "meaning" has many uses, for various and distinct purposes. One profound philosophical point made about meaning comes from an author who has written about his impression of the book, The Meaning of Meaning. The author, Em Griffin, writes about an encounter with one of his students in a Philosophy class he was teaching.
The student, named Brenda, asked the professor: "Sir, my boyfriend wants me to put out physically to prove that I love him. Does this mean that he loves me?"
The author/professor relates how that question stumped him. Finally, he decided to answer the student's question with his own question: "Before we answer that question, let us first know your definition of "love."
The author goes on to say that the meaning of a word is not in the word, it is in the person that is using it.
What a word means is always what the user of that word intends for it. Words do not have meanings independent of the person using it.
When a priest asks you "What is the meaning of life," you know what he is driving at. You know that he wants you to think that earth is your temporary home and that the after-life is your true destiny.
When a college professor asks the same question, the professor's intent will depend on the professor and his state of mind at the time he asks the question. Is the professor an inspirational leader? Is he an agnostic? An atheist? Is he an existentialist? Or perhaps, like Camus, an absurdist?
The meaning is in the person using the word, not in the word itself.
"She called me a slow poke," said Donald. "Does she mean I move too slowly in our relationship, or does she mean it takes me forever to climb the four flights of stairs to her apartment?"
"What do you mean I don't do anything around the house? I take care of the laundry, I clean the pool, I take care of our child after school." The husband is clearly frustrated that his wife does not think he is doing anything around the house, when he has all these chores that he has just enumerated.
"Your dad means well," the mother assured her teen-aged daughter, "he is just having a hard time expressing himself to you right now because he sees your ear-rings and the rings on your eye-brows and he wonders where his little baby girl had gone."
"I mean... I mean," the mail-room clerk stammers, not sure that he is expressing his thoughts clearly to his boss.
"The boy carries your books for you when you get out of your car and walk uphill on your driveway towards your house. He mows your lawn, he feeds your cat when you're away. Does any of that mean anything to you?" asked Maggie's friend Cheryl. "That's just it," Maggie tells Cheryl. "I don't want this fourteen-year-old doing all these things for me. I can't reciprocate, I'm not his mother."
"There are dozens of mosques in New York, it's just one more mosque," says the Imam. "Yes, but none of the mosques are a stone's throw from Ground Zero. Think of what a mosque that close to Ground Zero would mean to the grieving families," says Giuliani.
A word's meaning, the meaning of an action, or a gesture, is often determined by context and by the dynamics of the relationship between the sender of the message and its recipient. To a loving couple, a word such as "pest" could be a term of endearment. It could mean that the man is a horny sonofagun.
And so, my dear son, if you are reading this blog post, the meaning of meaning is the thought that the communicator wishes to convey, and not necessarily what most people think the word or group of words means.
Channeling S. I. Hayakawa: Help!
