Textual Meaning

Chantell talked about interpreting texts, and it has reminded me of some interesting conversations I’ve had with my classes, as well as my observations on how we assign meaning to a text.

One Fish, Two Fish…
Every semester I ask my students if there is one central interpretation of a text or if there are multiple readings. I always get a lot of different answers. Perhaps students haven’t thought about it before. Many think there is one main message to “get,” and then others think you can get a lot of different things from a text. At this point we talk about theme and how a work can have one theme or multiple themes. We also begin discussing how you can analyze the text and make interpretations about the position the text takes on the theme.

Who’s the Boss?
I also ask students if they think the author had an intended meaning behind the text. Since I teach that you begin writing with consideration of your purpose and audience, we usually agree that the author has an intended meaning. (Check Marjorie’s recent blog.) Then I ask the fun question. If our interpretation doesn’t happen to match the author’s intended meaning, does that make our interpretation less valid? I ask these questions so that students will realize that usually texts do have a main theme and a generally agreed-upon interpretation. However, you can read a text through many different critical lenses and have valid interpretations.

New Vision
Interacting with my students helped me realize that each student’s personal connection with a text is extremely important. Traditionally literature instructors taught that students needed to catch the agreed-upon critical interpretation of text. In making classes a dissection of texts with critical theory, they minimized the student’s experience and devalued personal interpretations. After being a student in that environment but then standing behind the lectern myself, I believe the best way to facilitate learning literature is to empower students with critical theory but to also validate their personal interpretations. We can’t expect people to desire to read if we don’t let allow them the freedom to assign meaning themselves.