Q&A #2-Question #1

“Should popular opinion play any role in determining the denotation of a word? ”

In the middle of writing my Q&A for this week, I suddenly became confused. I was not confused because of the reading, or the topic as a whole; rather I was perplexed as a result of one specific contentious that was brought up in class. In order to illustrate the antecedents to my sense of puzzlement, I should refer back to our discussion in class.

During class last week, we had a loud discussion on the idea of whether literature should be limited to forms of writing. Many of us became very animated as a result of this strongly contentious argument. During this time, Dave pointed out the fact that no one could provide a sufficient reason in support of the idea that literature must be written. Actually, the only thing that people were doing was make the implicit implication that literature is written because popular opinion believes that to be true.

Of course, it is true that popular opinion feels this way. In fact, if you search the terms “literature definition” in Google, the first entry reads: “Written works, esp. those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit: "a great work of literature". Ignoring the problems with associating literature with aesthetic merit (at least for right now), it is evident that most denotations of literature include the stipulation that it must be a piece of written work. Accordingly, this relates back to the idea that popular opinion thinks that the category of literature should only include forms of writing. But, should this should this play any role in determining the definition of literature. I say this because it does not seem that there is any strong evidence in support of the idea that the category literature must be limited to forms of writing. Furthermore, as DKJ brought up in class, every part of a definition should be there for good reason, not just because we are accustomed to it.

I agree with the above statement, but it seems that the denotation of words come from how they are original used (please excuse my use of extremely commonsensical statements); thus, they are determined in part because of popular opinion. So, where does this leave us with literature? What if people have always used the term in terms of specifically written works, but we cannot come up with good reasons for why this should be included into the definition, other than the fact that “everyone thinks this”? In addition, for terms likes this in which a stringent definition may not be possible, can the acceptance of popular denotation without further questioning ever suffice?