Reconstruction Of Theory Of Constraints On Textual Interpretation

Studies of constraints on textual interpretation have once again highlighted themselves ever since the Eco-Rorty debate on the topic of "Interpretation and Overinterpretation" in Tanner's Lecture. This thesis, taking into consideration their debate, explores different traditional research frameworks for textual interpretation and their limitations, and proposes a new research framework with focus on the thoughts of constraints in different textual interpretative views. In this new framework the views are divided into three categories: views that only focus on contraints on textual interpretation, views that emphasize creativity in textual interpretation and views that see as equally important both constraints on and creativity in textual interpretation.Based on the critical analysis of ideas of constraints in different textual interpretative views, this thesis reconstructs the theory of constraints on textual interpretation by drawing on three significant concepts: Hussel's "ideational meaning" and "single meaning", Apel's "speech communication community" and Wittgenstein's "rules of language game". The main points of this reconstructed theory are as follows:The constraints on textual interpretation involve two aspects: one defined as semantic determined by the textual ideational meaning and the other defined as pragmatic delimited by speech communication community.The semantic constraint, the textual ideational meaning, puts limit on the textual interpretation although within the limit there are numerous possible interpretations. The limit of interpretation is like the limit of a set of integral numbers, which puts all the odd numbers within itself and those that are not within this limit cannot possibly be odd numbers. The "overinterpretation" as called by Eco will arise when a certain interpretation goes beyond the limit of the textual interpretation.The pragmatic constraint, as a result of the practice of the speech communication community will permit only one or several interpretations instead of numerous ones allowed by the textual ideational meaning. In this paper, this or these several interpretations accepted by the community are what we call valid interpretations and the demarcation between valid and invalid interpretations is said to be the borderline in this paper.