Essay 3 - Meaning as Content

If everyone said what they meant in a clear and unambiguous manner, Meaning as Content would be pretty straightforward. If somebody says, “I like your tie,” it means that they like your tie.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Sometimes people try to say what they mean, but the message is unclear. Sometimes they manage to blurt something out, but the meaning is unclear. Sometimes they say something intentionally to mislead you. So, it is easy to think that all Meaning as Content must be interpreted which makes it Meaning as Inference, which is the topic of the next essay.

On the other hand, there are people who take everything at face value and interpret the contents of any message literally. They think their interpretation is the only correct interpretation and any other interpretations are just, well, interpretations.

This leads to two errors which can help us to understand the difference between Meaning as Content and Meaning as Inference. We will refer to these two errors as Type A and Type U. A Type A error is when you think a message is ambiguous, but it is not. And a Type U error is when you think a message is unambiguous, but it is not.

If you approach a stop sign and wonder if it applies to you, you are making a Type A error. The message is unambiguous, and you are treating it as through it was ambiguous.

On the other hand, assume somebody has said that they like your tie but said it in a snide tone of voice. Yet you think they do like your tie because they just said so. In this case you are making a Type U error. The meaning of the message is ambiguous, open to interpretation, but you think it is unambiguous. You think they meant what they said. You think they like your tie.

With a more complex message such as a book, this gets a little trickier. If somebody asks you what Huckleberry Finn is about, you could say that it is a story about a runaway boy who took a raft trip down the Mississippi River. That is literally true and as close to content as one might come with a novel. However, it is still a Type U error, that is, you think it is unambiguous when it is not. This is because any story that is not open to multiple interpretations is not much of a story. 

This story is a little over 400 words and the audio is a little over 3 minutes.