This must be the longest attempt to save face by anyone I've seen here. Thanks for putting the effort in.
------------------Original Message---------------
Robin Hamilton wrote:
David:
On 26 October 2016 at 19:43 David Lace <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Robin, notwithstanding the various problematical and philosophical difficulties that uses of language summon forth, my point was to differentiate the “usual” understanding of the word “reception” to the word “reception” that is associated with the term “reception theory”. By “usual” I mean the commonly accepted dictionary definition of the word, rather than that associated with its theoretical uses in relation to literary theory.
You, see, there's my problem, and I come on it again and again when I'm trying to make sense of what you say. You have a stream of terms which seem to imply a strict usage and considered theoretical backgrounds, then you come out with, "I mean the commonly accepted dictionary definition of the word."
The only response to that particular wildly-optimistic statement is, "Which bloody dictionary?" It assumes some sort of Platonic object called "the dictionary" which exists behinds all the various ones which exist in various fashions, and don't always agree in how they define words, and anyway are (when they don't simply repeat their immediate predecessor) the judgement, usually nowadays that of a committee, of what the word might mean when used by a variety of people in a variety of contexts.
Among more than several things which make your statement about "the dictionary" as a source of authority over the meaning of words (rather than as a reporting of how words are used) is that it becomes circular: dictionaries report the common meaning of words because that's what the word means when people who want to know what a word means find when they look it up in a [sic] dictionary.
Whilst I agree that words and their meanings are amenable to lexical and hermeneutical “difficulties”, I do believe that words can have unproblematical uses in everyday language and discourse, such as the one we are having here.
If you believe that words are *anywhere* unproblematic, then all I can say I think you are wrong. And an appeal to a context in which we both seem to be demonstrating that, *in that very context*, they are well beyond problematic seems to me a bit self-defeating.
By “semantic reception” I mean the way the words of a poem or song are processed by readers and listener.
All I can say is that I spent a long time trying to work out just what you meant, or even *might* mean by the phrase, and it turns out that what you really meant/intended/assumed we'd understand you as saying, was, "This is how people understand a poem or song." Right.
I use the word “semantic” in relation to “reception” to distinguish an earlier use of “reception” made by someone here, that suggested that the processing of musical sound by the brain was the same as that of words being heard and processed by the brain.
Frankly, I'm no clearer as to what you originally intended than I was in the first place.
But that's it, I really am out of this, "this" being to try to make sense of what you say.
As someone once said somewhere in a different context:
"You just sort of wasted my precious time. So, don't think twice, it's all right."
Goodbye.
Robin
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