St Anselm's Senior Common Room, Early Evening
The common room had entered its quieter hours. Lamps had been lit, shadows had lengthened, and the fire had settled into occasional thoughtful cracklings.
Professor Quillibrace sat reading correspondence.
Miss Elowen Stray had become absorbed in notes.
Mr Blottisham entered carrying a sealed envelope and wearing the look of a man who had returned from battle victorious.
He sat down heavily.
"I have solved everything."
Quillibrace looked up.
"Everything?"
"Communication."
Quillibrace closed his letter very slowly.
"I see."
Blottisham placed the envelope triumphantly upon the table.
"It is obvious when one thinks about it."
Miss Stray looked interested.
"In what way?"
Blottisham spread his hands.
"I possess thoughts."
"Mm."
"I convert the thoughts into words."
"Mm."
"The words travel outward."
"Mm."
"You receive them and reconstruct the thoughts."
He leaned back with satisfaction.
"There."
Silence.
Quillibrace looked at him.
Blottisham smiled confidently.
Nothing happened.
Eventually Blottisham frowned.
"You appear unconvinced."
"I am attempting to identify where the disaster begins."
Miss Stray smiled faintly.
"We do often speak that way."
"Of course we do," said Blottisham.
"Thought becomes signal. Signal becomes thought again."
Quillibrace folded his hands.
"The familiar picture does indeed assume something like this."
He began counting quietly on his fingers.
"Thoughts exist privately within individuals."
Blottisham nodded.
"Language encodes those thoughts."
"Precisely."
"Words carry meanings."
"Obviously."
"Listeners decode those meanings."
Blottisham sat back with satisfaction.
"Simple."
Quillibrace looked at him for several moments.
"Mr Blottisham."
"Yes?"
"Where exactly is the meaning while it is travelling?"
Blottisham blinked.
"...inside the words."
Quillibrace nodded thoughtfully.
"A sentence spoken sarcastically."
Blottisham paused.
"Oh."
"The literal words remain identical."
"Oh."
"The meaning changes."
"Oh dear."
Miss Stray looked up.
"A joke can fail completely in a different context."
"Quite."
"A phrase may be affectionate in one relationship and insulting in another."
Quillibrace nodded.
"Yet the words themselves remain unchanged."
Blottisham looked troubled.
"Well perhaps meaning sits inside people's minds instead."
Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.
"And if meanings originate privately within isolated individuals..."
He leaned slightly forward.
"...how exactly do they become shared?"
Silence.
Blottisham stared.
"Well..."
"If meanings remain entirely internal, communication becomes a peculiar sort of miracle."
Miss Stray was writing rapidly now.
"Because how could one ever know that what leaves one mind is what enters another?"
Quillibrace smiled faintly.
"Precisely."
Blottisham looked increasingly uneasy.
"So... words are not carrying meanings around."
"No."
"And meanings are not private parcels moving between minds."
"No."
"Oh no."
Quillibrace leaned back.
"The curious thing is that people do not ordinarily communicate by exchanging ready-made packages."
Miss Stray looked thoughtful.
"Children don't learn language by decoding messages."
"No."
"They learn through participation."
"Exactly."
"Shared situations, histories, relationships..."
"...all participate in what meanings become."
Blottisham looked at the envelope on the table suspiciously.
"So meaning doesn't simply arrive intact."
"No."
"It emerges through relations."
Quillibrace nodded.
"The transported object begins quietly disappearing."
Miss Stray looked down at her notes.
"So language is not primarily transporting meanings."
"No."
"It participates in the ongoing actualisation of meaning."
"Quite."
Blottisham sat motionless.
Rain had begun again outside.
The fire cracked softly.
At length he spoke.
"I have had a troubling thought."
Quillibrace looked unsurprised.
"Again?"
Blottisham frowned deeply.
"If words do not contain meanings..."
He glanced anxiously at the envelope.
"...what exactly have letters been carrying all these years?"
Quillibrace considered this carefully.
"Mostly paper, Mr Blottisham."
A pause.
"And occasionally disappointment."
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