Get fulltext from our e-platform
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
Published online on 21 November 2011
Published online on 21 November 2011
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
- Prelim pages | pp. i–iv
- Table of contents | pp. v–viii
- Acknowledgments | pp. ix–9
- 0. Introduction | pp. 1–8
- 1. The Classical Conception of Meaning and its Shortcomings | pp. 9–22
- 1.1. Meaning in a literary setting
- 1.2. The arguments for the defense
- 1.3. More about the propositional theory of language and its semantic consequences: the Xerox theory of meaning
- 1.4. Context matters
- 2. Toward an Integrated Theory of Meaning | pp. 23–60
- 2.1. The question of the validity of the substitution view
- 2.2. The problematological view of language
- 2.3. The problematological theory of reference
- 2.4. Reference and meaning
- 2.5. From substitutions to questions
- 2.6. Is meaning really substitutional?
- 2.7. Conclusion
- 3. The Rhetoric of Textuality | pp. 61–86
- 3.1. Textual meaning is rhetorical
- 3.2. Rhetoric and argumentation
- 3.3. Why should rhetoric (argumentation) be problematologically conceptualized?
- 3.4. Literary versus non-literary discourse
- 3.5 What is literature?
- 4. Ideas and Ideology | pp. 87–104
- 4.1. The nature of ideas
- 4.2. Ideas and questions in Plato's theory
- 4.3. Ideas and political ideologies
- 4.4. The logic of ideology
- 5. The Nature of Literariness | pp. 105–140
- 5.1. Ideas and textuality
- 5.2. Literature and political ideology
- 5.3. The dialectics of fiction
- 5.4. Fiction and reality
- 5.5. Literary forms as means of materializing the problematological difference
- 5.6. The birth of the novel: Don Quixote as an illustration
- 5.7. Conclusion
- 6. The Interpretative Process | pp. 141–168
- 6.1. Beyond traditions and omissions
- 6.2. Answerhood as meaning
- 6.3. The hermeneutic question and its answer
- 6.4. Textuality as the meeting point of poetics and hermeneutics
- 6.5. Where do we find the questions answered by a text?
- 6.6. Textual dialectics
- Footnotes | pp. 169–172
- | pp. 173–176
Cited by (15)
Cited by 15 other publications
Bosman, Frank G.
Spinato, Giampaolo
Barsky, Robert F.
Turnbull, Nick
Turnbull, Nick
Yarbrough, Stephen R.
Yang, Mikyeong
Shi-Xu
Margetson, Don
Vecchione, Bernard
Golden, James L.
Meyer, Michel
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 march 2026. 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.