Discussion on Chapter 3 - How Ordianary is Ordianary Language?

The essay I will discuss this week is chapter three titled,  How Ordinary Is Ordinary Language?   Fish starts out the article by giving one definition of ordinary language.

Ordinary language “presents or mirrors facts independently of any consideration of any value, interest, perspective, purpose an so on.” 

Fish then explains how he came up with definition by looking at the conflict seen between linguistics and critics.  The linguistics claim literature is language and they can describe the text by using linguistics and that will be relevant while the critics say just a linguistic analysis leaves out something and that something is what makes literature.  Fish following their disagreements and discussion and says the two camps cannot agree what literature is but they agree by default that there is an ordinary language.  Critics argue that linguistics should stick to the analysis of ordinary text and leave literature to them. 

The definition of ordinary text then becomes what literature is not:

1.  carries messages

2. logical

3.valueless – “ language is an entity that can be specified  independently of human values .”

The definition of literature is

1.  contains our values – This is a need to create a way where our “values can claim pride of place”

2. contains intentions and purpose

However Fish points out that if our ordinary language is void of values then the norm is impoverished so deviation from the norm (literature) is even worse.  Fish states “Deviation theories always trivialize the norm and therefore trivialize everything else.  (Everyone loses.)”

Fish goes on to discuss new theories from linguistics about ordinary language.  The new studies show that linguistics is not just labeling items, but utterances (words, phrases, messages) have values, intentions and purpose.  These are the same terms that were used to describe literary language.  Fish comes to the conclusion that ordinary language and literary languages are the same. 

So what is literature?  Are we back to the start that literature is no different from everyday language?  No there is a difference we just need to think about it differently.  I like the quote by Roman Jakobson on literary theory “What makes a verbal message a work of art.”    Fish goes through a huge essay to describe that it is not the opposite of ordinary language and the way we know literature is by our communities.

We decide what literature is based upon the community of readers.  The criteria the literary community imposes will determine what literature is.  The criteria can and will change over time.  Our culture and the time period will affect the way we read and pay attention to a text.  Aesthetics is a historical process.

Fishes definition of literature is:

1. Product of a way of reading

2. Community agreement about what will count as literature

3 Creation of literature is made by the community and the criteria it puts forth.

This ties into his article “How do we know a poem when we see one.”  We know it because our literary community has already defined the criteria as to what constitutes a poem.

Discussion on Chapter 14 - How to Recognize a Poem When You See One

 Fish talks about interpretive communities being the basis of our meaning of text and also the way we write a text is based upon the community we come from.  We do not arbitrarily get meaning from out of the blue it is confided by our literary community.   In his article How to recognize a poem when we see one he opens his statement by saying

“I sketched out an argument by which meanings are the property neither of fixed and stable texts nor of free and independent readers but of interpretive communities that are responsible both for the shape of the reader’s activities and for the texts those activities produced.”

He states that we know what a poem is since our literary community which I see as our background tells us what a poem looks like.  We get meaning form a poem the same we recognize it as a poem.  We use our background knowledge of what people put into poems and we analyze it within that framework.    

He gave several examples of how this community works.  The one I liked was his example of why we know what is happening in a classroom when someone raises their hand.  During one of his classes a student raised his hand and started to wave it.   He asked the class what this student was doing they all replied he wanted permission to speak.  They were all in the same community, the literature class.  If someone was sitting in an elementary classroom then they may say he needs the bathroom and is asking the teacher to go to the bathroom.  The elementary students would be in the elementary community and have a common meaning.  So the same gesture is seen in schools or academic settings.  We all learn these since we are a part of that community.   Our gesture is our text in this case.  Then the meaning we get is also based on our community.  One meaning is from a college community where if one needs the bathroom we would just get up and go, but we still need to raise our hand to speak.   This goes back to his first statement:

“interpretive communities that are responsible both for the shape of the reader’s activities and for the texts”

I would like to know if we are not part of the community who writes the text, but we still read the text will our meanings be valid?  For example, I read poetry but I was never good at getting the hidden meanings.  I really struggled with poetry in high school and I’m sad to say I never studied poetry after high school.  I felt I was not part of the literary community. 

Discussion of the Book Is there a text in this class? The Authotiry of Interpretive Communities

I am currently a graduate student at the University of New Mexico.  I am taking a class on literature.  We have been discussing the meaning of texts.  We started the semester by discussing Professor Rosenblatt.  Now we are all reading different texts.  To discuss these texts and we are using a blog format.  I am new to blogging so this will be a fun and new experience for me.

A little about my background, I am currently teaching a chemistry, physics and senior math class.  I took a literature class to incorporate literature into my science classrooms.  I also took some AVID training to start learning about “marking” up the text.  By annotating students can pick out meanings from their texts.  This was important for me to implement in my classroom with the Common Core Standards being in effect.

I also think it is important to incorporate literature and not just informational texts into my classroom and that is why I took this literature class.

The book I will be discussing will be Is there a Text in this class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities  by Stanley Fish Publisher: Harvard University Press (June 25, 1982) ISBN-10: 0674467264 · ISBN-13: 978-0674467262

While I skimmed through the book I see that it is a collection of previous papers by Stanley Fish.  I will pick a few articles and discuss them further.  The first article/chapter will be How to Recognize a Poem when you see one.  In this article Fish describes how our interpretation is dependent on our interpretation culture.  We do not come up with individual interpretations but our culture is what shapes our interpretation.  We are all in an interpretive community and this shapes us even if we are not aware of it.  He applies this theory to how we see poems.  When do we know it is a poem?  We all know what poems are so we are shaped before we even look at the poem.

What I got out of this paper was Fish described interpretation and thus meaning as not being random, but being a product of your culture.   The culture changes so the interpretations can change but they are not wrong.   

After I read the article I also read a few reviews on Fish.  The one I liked was by Liz Herrin.  She brought up a few points I did not think about as I was reading the article.  She was right that Fish only used concrete examples to explain his theory.

http://voices.yahoo.com/the-question-identity-culture-through-works-57889.html (Liz Herrin’s thoughts)

Since this is my first time reading Fish I will continue on with the articles and maybe his theory will become clear to me as I continue on in the book.