IS THERE A TEXT IN THIS CLASS?--Stanley Fish

IS THERE A TEXT IN THIS CLASS?

Summary prepared for research scholars of Indian Universities by S. Sreekumar

Stanley Fish’s arguments in this essay are based on the conviction that the text is not a stable thing with a determinate meaning. Fish narrates the anecdote of a fresher who asked: “Is there a text in this class?” and the professor who answered: ‘Yes, it’s the Norton Anthology of Literature’. This reply forced the student to clarify thus: “No, No, I mean in this class do we believe in poems and things, or is it just us?”

Fish says that in this encounter, there are many things that are of concern to the literary critic. M.H. Abrams had argued that people like Derrida, Bloom and Fish (New Readers) ignore the “ordinary realm of experience in speaking, hearing, reading and understanding”. They rely on the “norms and possibilities” embedded in language “the linguistic meanings” words undeniably have and take the reader to a world in which ‘no text can mean anything in particular ‘and where ‘we can never say just what anyone means by anything he writes”. The gist of Abrams’ charge is that the literal/ normative meanings were overruled by stubborn interpreters who impose their own meanings.

In the light of the above argument, let us examine the question: “Is there a text in the class?” What, exactly, is the normative/literal/linguistic meaning of "Is there a text in this class?"

Fish argues that two meanings are possible:   

1. Whether or not there is a required textbook in the class for a particular course?

2. What is the instructor’s position (within the range of positions available in contemporary literary theory) on the status of the text?

Both these meanings are not imposed on us. Both interpretations are derived through the normal use of language. Here what is important is that the professor and the student are within the established practices and assumptions of an educational institution. Hence their interpretative activities are common. They get their meanings from the practices of the institution and not from the rules and fixed meanings of a language system.

    Fish now takes the argument one step further. He classifies both questions thus:

“Is there a text in the class” —— (1)

“Is there a text in the class” —— (2)

The meaning of (1) is immediately available to the native speaker. The meaning is understood in the situation “first day of class’.

The meaning of (2) will be understood only one who is aware of the disputes in contemporary literary theory.

Fish says that one more meaning is possible:

“Is there a text in the class” —— (3). Someone had forgotten the text in the class and next morning may ask (3).

Critics like Abrams may fear that the plurality of meanings may be the beginning of an endless succession of meanings—— (4), (5) etc. thus undermining the normative and the determinate. But Fish says that the example need not be taken in that sense at all. “In all these situations the meaning of the utterance is restricted, “not after it was heard but in the ways in which it could be heard”. “An infinite plurality of meaning would be a fear only if sentences existed in a state in which they were not already embedded in” some situation or other. But there is no such state. Sentences emerge only in situations. Within a particular situation, the normative meaning of an utterance is clear to all native speakers. Another situation may provide the same sentence with another meaning.

·         This does not mean that there is no way to discriminate between the meanings an utterance can have in different situations.

·         At the same time, it is never possible to give a sentence an immutable once-and-for-all ranking, a ranking that is independent of their appearance or nonappearance in situations. It is only in situations that a sentence does or does not appear.

However one of the above meanings is more common than the other. Many people will understand (1) more easily than (2). In fact, (2) has to be laboriously explained to make someone understand the idea.  In fact more people might already have heard (1) and all those who have heard (2) might have already heard (1).Fish says that “some institutions or forms of life are so widely lived in that for a great many people the meaning they enable seem "naturally" available”.  This helps Abrams and Hirsch speak about shared understanding of ordinary language and argue about the availability of a core of determinate meanings.

Hirsch gives another example of a “verbal meaning” accessible to all speakers of the language. The sentence “The air is crisp”, Hirsch says, has a determinate and sharable meaning. Fish agrees with this argument. Most people will immediately understand the utterance as a rough meteorological description of the local atmosphere.  

However, Fish turns the same example against Hirsch’s arguments favoring stability of meaning. Fish says that the obvious meaning of the expression is not because of the value of its words. Even this expression is not free from the context. Fish says that we hear the words already embedded in a context. On the other hand, if we hear the words in the middle of a discussion on music [‘when the piece played correctly the air is crisp’] the same comment would become a comment on the performance.

 The statement would only be heard that way. “Thus Hirsch invokes a context by not invoking it: by not surrounding the utterance with circumstances, he directs us to imagine it in the circumstances in which it is most likely to have been produced…” Thus it is impossible even to think of a sentence independently of a context. If there is no context given, we will imagine a context which is usually linked to the utterance.

The conclusions to be drawn from these examples:-

1. No speaker/hearer is constrained by the meaning of words in a normative linguistic system,

2. At the same time no one is free to ‘confer’ any meaning on an utterance.

Fish admits that ‘confer’ is the wrong word in the context:-

‘Confer’ implies a two-stage procedure. First the reader or hearer scrutinizes an utterance. Then he gives it a meaning.

But there is no such first stage. When a sentence is heard in a particular context we already have assigned it a shape and given it a meaning.  “...the problem of how meaning is determined is only a problem if there is a point at which its determination has not yet been made, and I am saying that there is no such point”, says Fish.

Sometimes one may self-consciously figure out what an utterance means. The professor, when he heard the question of the student (1), assigned it a meaning that was inappropriate. He assumed a meaning. That was challenged by the student. It was a mistake not created by syntax. It is a mistaken identification of intention. He has not “misread the text but mis-pre-read the text, and if he is to correct himself he must make another (pre)determination of the structure of interests from which her question issues.

·        A statement may not have a determinate meaning.

·        But the meaning is either perfectly clear or capable to be clarified in course of time.

·        This is not made possible by the possibilities and norms encoded in the language.

·        Communication occurs within situations.

·        To be in a situation is already to be in possession of a structure of assumptions.

·        Within these assumptions any utterance is immediately heard.

The term Immediately needs further explanation:

Abrams assumes a distance between one’s receiving of an utterance and the determination of its meaning—“a kind of dead space when one has only the words and then faces the task of construing them”.

Fish says, “... meanings come already calculated not because of norms embedded in the language but because language is always perceived (from the very first) within a structure of norms. That structure is not abstract and independent but social”.

Fish adds that the structure is “not a single structure” with a special or privileged relationship “to the process of communication as it occurs in any situation”. But it is a structure that changes when one situation (which has a lot of assumed practices, goals, purposes) has given way to another”.

Commenting on the basis for agreement sought by Abrams and others, Fish observes that the basis is never not already found, although it is not always the same one”.

Relativism

Will this lead to relativism?

Many will say that if norms and standards are context specific, they will bring in infinite plurality of norms and standards with no way to adjudicate between them. To have many standards is to have no standards at all.

Fish says that this counter argument is true but beside the point. It rules out the possibility of a norm whose validity would be recognized by everyone no matter what the situation.

·        But the absence of a situational norm is not of any practical importance or consequence. It does not affect the speaker’s/reader’s ability to perform. Hence it does not matter.

Relativism, according to Fish, is a position we can entertain. But it is not a position we can occupy. To be a relativist we have to keep a distance from our own beliefs and assumptions. Then our beliefs and assumptions will not be authentic for us any more than the beliefs and assumptions of others.

    However, the individual is never indifferent to the norms and values that enable his consciousness. Any individual acts on the basis of personally held norms and values. He does so with full confidence. When his beliefs change, the norms and values to which he once gave unthinking assent will be demoted to the status of opinions. They will become the object of analytical and critical attention. The individual’s old values and norms will then be replaced by another set of norms and values which will remain unexamined for the moment. There is never a moment that one believes in nothing—when our consciousness is free from all kinds of thought.[‘When our consciousness is free from all kinds of thought’, we are dead.]

Solipsism (the belief that the self is all that exists or can be known)

It can be argued that an individual’s thought has no public value, and when an individual is trapped in his own thought a shared intelligibility (understanding) will become impossible.

The answer to this is that

·        an individual’s assumptions and thoughts are never ‘his own’. He is not their ‘origin’. They are available prior to him. Their prior availability delimits in advance the paths that his consciousness can take.

·        An individual speaks or reasons on the basis of a shared understanding. The categories are his own only in the sense that he is automatically the heir to the institutions’ way of making sense; its sense of intelligibility.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Fish’s arguments can be summarized thus:

1. Even if an independent and context-free system of meanings is absent, communication will take place.

2. People who participate in the process of communication do so confidently rather than provisionally. They are not relativists.

3. While their confidence has its source in a set of beliefs, those beliefs are not individual-specific but communal and conventional. They are not solipsists.

    

Fish comments that Abrams, Hirsch and others spend a great deal of time in search for the ways to limit and constrain interpretation. “ My message to them is finally not challenging, but consoling—not to worry”.

[summarized by Dr. S. Sreekumar for M.Phil scholars of Indian Universities]