Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [33]
5
No Need for the Wordinistas at Webster’s
JASON SOUTHWORTH
The character played by Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report, also known as Stephen Colbert, often says things that are confusing. I’m referring not to negative things the character says about Democrats, which are often confusing because they’re false, nor am I referring to positions he holds which seem to be evidence that he is not rational (like his denial of there being such a thing as truth). Rather, the confusion to which I’m referring is even more fundamental. At times, Colbert uses words or combinations of words that are hard to understand. Sometimes this confusion stems from his having just coined a new word, such as “superstantial” or “wordanista.” Sometimes the confusion stems from the obvious literal falsehood of his claims, or an inappropriate grammatical structure, like in the case of “I am America (and So Can You!)” And yet, in spite of this surface confusion, we can still come to understand what Colbert means when he makes one of these utterances.
The Meaningness of Terms
When doing philosophy, it’s always important to get clear on our terms before we start throwing them around. While it might seem strange, the first term that we need to define is meaning. In our everyday talk, meaning is often confused with something philosophers of language call reference. Words refer to things, and we call those things ‘referents’. The referent of a word is the thing in the world which a word picks out. For instance, The Colbert Report refers to the television show that Stephen Colbert hosts.
Often, the referent of a word depends on the situation in which the word is used. So, in an ordinary sentence like “I left the book on the table,” referents for “I,” “book,” and “table” will depend on who said that they left a book on the table and exactly which book and table they are talking about. When we give the meaning of something, however, we give a detailed description of what that thing is. So, what I mean when I use the word “table” is “a piece of furniture with a large flat surface held up by one or more supports.” When I use this word in a sentence like “that table has a broken leg,” the referent is the specific table that I am indicating with the “that,” but the meaning of this sentence is something like, “there is a specific piece of furniture that has a large flat surface that is held up by at least one support, and one of those supports is not functioning properly.”
The concept of meaning is often complicated further by making a distinction between literal and non-literal meaning. The literal meaning of what someone says is simply the ordinary meaning of the sentence. The way Colbert might put this is that the literal meaning of a word or sentence is the meaning that the wordinistas at Webster’s want you to believe. The meaning I gave above for “that table has a broken leg” is the literal meaning. Non-literal meaning, as you might have guessed, is when the meaning of a sentence is something other than the literal meaning. Non-literal meanings come in various types. Hyperbole and metaphor are two common types of sentences that have non-literal meanings. If Mrs. Colbert says to Stephen, “you are the cream in my coffee,” what she has said is literally false. But there is a separate metaphorical meaning which probably is true. She’s saying that Stephen goes well with her, or complements her nicely.
Senseness and Nonsenseness
Before I explain how it is that we come to understand what Colbert means when he makes his confusing utterances, I will say something to those who don’t believe that these utterances mean anything at