Literal Meaning
\r\nThere is no such thing as ‘literal meaning’ in its usual sense of ‘what a text really says.’ We often assume that, however much we differ on interpretations, a statement or text has an obvious and objective ‘literal’ aspect that preserves an unchanging core of meaning and cannot be escaped. We assume that we can isolate this stable, stand-alone meaning using the dictionary definition of its words and by removing it from any context. What we might term the ‘dictionary meaning’ of a text may indeed exist, but it is neither objective nor universal. As generations of Shakespeare readers have found, the definitions of words are not at all stable. They are shaped and reshaped by the speakers of a language as the language evolves. The bard’s ‘silly women’ in The Two Gentlemen of Verona were ‘innocent,’ not foolish.
\r\n‘Literal meaning’ is also commonly understood as the meaning that makes sense to us with the least interpretive effort. Put simply, it is the first coherent meaning that comes to mind. Better termed ‘evident meaning’ as the Muslim legal theorists called it (Zahir, or ‘outward’), this is not necessarily the same as the dictionary meaning. When a thief points a gun at you in a dark alley and growls, ‘Give me all your money,’ your mind immediately passes over the fact that, literally, ‘all your money’ includes everything in your various bank and investment accounts as well as other liquid assets you might own. You understand instantaneously that he only means the contents of your wallet (and maybe non-money items like your watch as well).
\r\nBut like the dictionary meaning, evident meaning is also subjective. It is determined by context and by a tradition of symbols and veteran assumptions shared by what Stanley Fish has called the ‘interpretive community’ to which the reader or hearer belongs. That evident meaning is not universally obvious or undisputed is clear when courts in the US and UK feel the need to refer to how a ‘reasonable person’ in those societies would understand speech or art in order to determine if it is defamatory or obscene. Unlike minority or idiosyncratic interpretations, this hypothetical ‘reasonable person’ is imagined as epitomizing the proper thinking of the interpretive community in question. The obliquity of evident meaning has been a boon to comedy writers, as seen in films like Airplane! and The Naked Gun franchise (Banquet doorman: ‘Your coat, sir?’ Detective Drebin: ‘Yes it is, and I have the receipt to prove it’).
\r\nThe evident meaning of a text seems obvious to those within an interpretive community, but, as Detective Frank Drebin illustrates, moving from the dictionary meaning to the evident one requires significant, if unnoticed, interpretive steps. In evident (i.e., ‘literal’) meaning, these unnoticed steps are those assumptions that the reader leaves unstated because he or she assumes everyone else shares them. Frank Drebin is so humorous because he is clueless about them. A tough noir cop supposedly ensconced in society and its hard-boiled dialogue, he is comically outside its interpretive community. He is oblivious to the understanding that you should leave your coat at the door at a fancy party; that the doorman is there to serve you; that you will be spoken to according to an etiquette that assumes you are used to being served.
\r\n Compiled From:
\r\n \"Misquoting Muhammad\" - Jonathan A.C. Brown, p. 273