holden caulfield [apparently as egalitarian as ever
in his impulses] writes that . . .
>> The need to convey *proper* meaning
>> through the inside track is elitist and useless.
i'm a little unsure what to do with that word "proper," but i
ask holden to consider the following two scenarios . . . in the
first a french speaker thinks of the sea and utters the sound
MER, but a speaker of english hears the sound MARE and
thinks not of the sea but of a horse . . .
in scenario two spielberg makes a movie called SCHINDLER'S
LIST which--whatever its virtues may be -- is generally
understood ["properly" understood??] to be a serious film, but
a group of teen agers in LA who have no familiarity with
either the subject matter being represented or the conventions
of representation being used find parts of it very funny . . .
without raising the ghosts of the intentional fallacy, or wanting
to make sweeping generalizations about the way meaning works,
i think it safe to say that simply pragmatically we would see
the english speaker as having misunderstood the word, and
the kids in LA as not having comprehended the movie . . .
holden certainly cannot "require" that the audience that laughed
at EXORCIST be instructed in the proper response but even he
admits that "the audience laugh[ed] at things that weren't funny
at all" . . . clearly the funniness or lack thereof in either SCHINDLER
or EXORCIST is not a function of the audience but a function of
something else, and if -- as must be the case for our conversations
to make any sense at all -- there are determinants external to
the audience then, while we cannot REQUIRE specific responses of
an audience we certainly can say that some responses are "better"
than others . . .
i agree that we need to gloss that word "better" . . . which may end up
meaning more adequate, more complete, more contextually anchored,
more historically legitimate, even more "proper" [though that word
i think begs the question] . . . . but certainly more something
mike
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