gstafleu

Gamera made an interesting observation the other day, which points up an interesting problem:
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Here is the problem: there is a whole world out there where "words don't mean what they mean." We can find an indication of that in a well-known (in NL) Dutch book that introduces poetry, whose title is: "Kijk maar, er staat niet wat er staat" ("Look, it doesn't say what it says"). We find this effect often (certainly not always) in poetry, and also in myth. The problem: how can we determine when words don't mean what they mean?

Here is a slight sidebar about myth. Myth has two purposes: (a) to teach you how the world works and how to live with it, and (b) to teach you how you yourself work and how to live with yourself. It does that in (up to) three "layers:" (1) the physical, or historical, layer: in other words the setting of the story. (2) The supernatural layer, which generally corresponds to objective (a), the world. And (3) the mystical layer, which usually corresponds to objective (b), yourself. As an example, in John 3 Jesus chats with Nicodemus. Layer 1 consists of two guys, Jesus and Nicodemus, chatting with each other somewhere in Jerusalem. Layer 2, which handles the explain-the-world objective, talks about big sky-daddy and the nice place in heaven where we go when we die, and what you should do to go there. Layer 3, the live-with-yourself layer, explains how heaven is a state of mind, and what you have to do to get there. (Let's assume this is correct for the moment, it is just an example, and not derail into a discussion about the "real" meaning of John 3.) The concept of "words that don't mean what they mean" comes into this as follows: the more you move from layer 1 to layer 3, the more this happens.

Back to the problem. If I want to point out that there are lots of places in literature where words don't mean what they mean, I quote examples and say: see, here the words don't mean what they mean. What is more, if the thing they "don't mean" in story A is the same as they don't mean in story B, there is a similarity between stories A and B. But then Gamera comes along and says" Hey, you can't do that: saying that words don't mean what they mean doesn't count as an argument." So now we're stuck. There is this whole world out there where this phenomenon happens all the time. But I have no way to point to it.

Any suggestions?

(BTW, I don't mean to single out Gamera here, I just use his remark as an example and his screen name as a prototype--no particular offense is intended.)

Gerard Stafleu