[TruthTalk] Communicating & Understanding....Joint participants in a story

[Lance Muir]

Each living person draws upon two quite distinct sources of meaning. The current 'vulgate' or common understanding. This is that which enables us to communicate with one another. Hidden beneath this is a 'private thesaurus'. What any two people mean when they speak or hear will overlap only to a certain extent by virtue of their sharing the 'vulgate' of a particular human group.   No reader comes to a text as a 'cultural virgin'. Our readings are affected at the outset by pre-understanding and private thesaurus.The meaning which we retrieve from a text will never be absolutely identical with the meaning which it had for its author or, for any other reader.   Meaning is something which 'happens' when we read the text and which is like the knowledge of the Lord in which the Psalmist rejoiced, new every morning.   This is not a transparent text through which we view something else. It is like a stained glass window depicting a story. It is 'the story we find ourselves in'.