Afterword

Abstract

The position I have developed in this book is one which argues that the study of language has to be a study of meanings which are constructed in interaction. Those meanings do not exist outside of the discourse which creates them, and meaning is never separate from interpretation. Meanings are not absolute realities encoded into texts, and are not, therefore, the sole property of the named authors of those texts. Meanings are not owned by those authors, and texts are not reflections or instances of already existing realities. That being the case, meanings are always uncertain and unstable and because of that there will always be conflict and struggle in interaction in order for one meaning to be given higher status than another — one language user to be given higher status than another. The result of that is the interactive base for understanding how language means is based not on co-operation but upon conflict.