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January 22, 2008
Alligators and Those Other Alligators
I had lunch with a long time friend today. On the way home, I listened to the local all news station. They give traffic reports every ten minutes. The first report I heard said that there was an alligator on the westbound 10 Freeway at Dudley. Two things interested me. First, I would be going by that location, but eastbound, in about 40 minutes and I wonder if there would be any delay in my direction. Second, there was an alligator on the westbound 10 Freeway at Dudley. That seemed abnormally interesting. Alligators on freeways here in Southern California are not very common. On the next report, the station told us that the Highway Patrol was doing a traffic brake to remove the alligator from the traffic lanes. The announcer and her partner laughed about it and made a joke about Reggie the Alligator. Last year, someone tired of Reggie as a "pet" and disposed of him and another smaller alligator in a lake in a nearby public park. It took a few months to capture him. While the traffic report seemed unlikely. There was not a hint that anything other than a four legged, tooth bearing, Alligator mississippiensis or related species was running around on the freeway with the California Highway Patrol in hot pursuit. The announcers were quite sure that this alligator was an alligator. And so was I.
And then came the third traffic report of my journey, the traffic announcer thanked a listener for calling in and telling them that "alligator" was trucker CB slang for the tread from the tire of an 18 wheeler or some other vehicle. Now perhaps if I got out more I would have known this. But believe me, the radio announcers were as clueless as I was.
The whole thing caused me to worry about something else. How much are we missing when we read an ancient text because we don't understand specialized uses of otherwise common vocabulary. The question itself has dangers. If one gives free rein to its implication than there is no way of understanding an ancient text. If one doesn't raise the question when faced with an unusual context one may well be missing something significant. That said, I think one needs to play the probability game. An interpreter of a common word in an unexceptional context must maintain the common range of meanings for that word. And of course, context always allows for significant meaning range. Even in uncommon contexts, we are not free to invent meanings out of whole cloth. But how do we know when and if we are dealing with an implied trope? Often we don't. And even if we suspect such a thing, how can we know what it means?
Posted by Duane Smith at January 22, 2008 8:19 PM | Read more on Odds and Ends |
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