Meaning and Reading
A philosophical essay on language and literature
Author
According to the traditional view, meaning presents itself under the form of some kind of identity. To give the meaning of a sentence amounts to being capable of producing some substitute based on the identity of the terms of the sentence. Is then the meaning of a book, or of any text, the capacity of rewriting it? Instead of retaining a double-standard theory of meaning, one for sentences and another for texts, that would allow for an ad hoc gap, the author provides a unified conception, called the question view of language he has developed, known as problematology. He pursues a systematic analysis of questioning in literature and shows how questioning makes the understanding process possible.
[Pragmatics & Beyond, IV:3] 1983. ix, 176 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgments | p. ix
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0. Introduction | p. 1
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1. The Classical Conception of Meaning and its Shortcomings | p. 9
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1.1. Meaning in a literary setting
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1.2. The arguments for the defense
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1.3. More about the propositional theory of language and its semantic consequences: the Xerox theory of meaning
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1.4. Context matters
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2. Toward an Integrated Theory of Meaning | p. 23
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2.1. The question of the validity of the substitution view
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2.2. The problematological view of language
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2.3. The problematological theory of reference
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2.4. Reference and meaning
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2.5. From substitutions to questions
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2.6. Is meaning really substitutional?
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2.7. Conclusion
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3. The Rhetoric of Textuality | p. 61
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3.1. Textual meaning is rhetorical
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3.2. Rhetoric and argumentation
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3.3. Why should rhetoric (argumentation) be problematologically conceptualized?
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3.4. Literary versus non-literary discourse
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3.5 What is literature?
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4. Ideas and Ideology | p. 87
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4.1. The nature of ideas
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4.2. Ideas and questions in Plato's theory
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4.3. Ideas and political ideologies
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4.4. The logic of ideology
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5. The Nature of Literariness | p. 105
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5.1. Ideas and textuality
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5.2. Literature and political ideology
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5.3. The dialectics of fiction
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5.4. Fiction and reality
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5.5. Literary forms as means of materializing the problematological difference
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5.6. The birth of the novel: Don Quixote as an illustration
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5.7. Conclusion
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6. The Interpretative Process | p. 141
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6.1. Beyond traditions and omissions
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6.2. Answerhood as meaning
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6.3. The hermeneutic question and its answer
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6.4. Textuality as the meeting point of poetics and hermeneutics
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6.5. Where do we find the questions answered by a text?
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6.6. Textual dialectics
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Footnotes | p. 169
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Cited by
Cited by 11 other publications
Golden, James L.
1991. An application of Michel Meyer's Theory of problematology to David Hume's Diaologues concerning natural religion. Argumentation 5:1 ► pp. 69 ff. 
Lempereur, Alain
1991. Logic or rhetoric in law?. Argumentation 5:3 ► pp. 283 ff.
Margetson, Don
1993. Understanding Problem‐Based Learning1. Educational Philosophy and Theory 25:1 ► pp. 40 ff.
Meyer, Michel
1986. Problematology and Rhetoric. In Practical Reasoning in Human Affairs, ► pp. 119 ff.
Meyer, Michel
1989. Toward an Anthropology of Rhetoric. In From Metaphysics to Rhetoric, ► pp. 111 ff.
Shi-Xu
1995. Cultural attitudes: in contexts of argumentation and explanation. Argumentation 9:2 ► pp. 371 ff.
Spinato, Giampaolo
2015. The Project and the Surprise: Invisible, ‘Sensitive Space’ and Meanings in Writing and Reading Stories. New Writing 12:2 ► pp. 114 ff.
Turnbull, Nick
2008. Dewey's philosophy of questioning: science, practical reason and democracy. History of the Human Sciences 21:1 ► pp. 49 ff.
Vecchione, Bernard
1992. La recherche musicologique aujourd'hui: Questionnements, intersciences, métamusicologie. Interface 21:3-4 ► pp. 281 ff.
Willard, Charles Arthur
1991. Adaptation to context. Argumentation 5:1 ► pp. 91 ff.
Yang, Mikyeong
2006. A critical review of research on questioning in education: limitations of its positivistic basis. Asia Pacific Education Review 7:2 ► pp. 195 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 7 may 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Main BIC Subject
DSB: Literary studies: general
Main BISAC Subject
LIT000000: LITERARY CRITICISM / General