Consider Roland Barthes’s actual interpretation. Steak and chips is supposed to ‘mean’ (according to an essay in Mythologies) ‘Frenchness’.
Suppose that the ‘meaning’ of oeufs bénédictines is ‘Catholicism’, and that of rum baba ‘sensuality’: what now is the meaning of the whole system? Does it mean that French Catholicism is compatible with sensuality?
Or that being French is more important than being Catholic? Or being sensual a fundamental part of both? There is no telling, since while the system has structure, it has no grammar.
Which is to say that there is no way in which the meanings of the parts determine a meaning for the whole. Hence we should not speak of ‘syntax’: the idea of syntax is the idea of a potential meaning, so that syntactical rules must depend upon semantic interpretation
No comments:
Post a Comment