Cultural Reader: Is There a Text in This Class? by Stanley Fish

In “Is There a Text in This Class?” Stanley Fish tells the story of a student who asks a professor whether there is a text in his class. He hears a question about the required book. She wants to know whether the course treats poems as objects with meanings independent of their readers. The words are the same, but the two people understand what is happening in the conversation differently. Fish uses the episode to explain how a situation shapes what an utterance can mean.

Why the question has two readings

A question about textbooks is ordinary on the first day of class. The professor recognizes that situation immediately and answers accordingly. When the student explains what she is asking and he learns she has studied with Fish, a different setting becomes relevant. Her question belongs to a debate in literary theory. Neither reading requires changing the words. Each brings different concerns and expectations into play.

What the anecdote shows about meaning

Fish’s claim goes beyond saying that context helps us choose among meanings we have already identified. We hear an utterance within a way of understanding the occasion. That understanding makes some readings clear and others hard to see. There is room for misunderstanding and correction because listeners can learn something that changes how they understand the exchange.

Does this make interpretation arbitrary?

The professor has reasons for each reading. The first day of class supports his initial answer, and the student’s clarification supports his revised one. For Fish, shared practices make such reasons intelligible. His account of interpretive communities explains why people can agree, disagree or revise an interpretation without each inventing meanings in isolation.

Fish tests the same idea in How to Recognize a Poem When You See One, where students use their training in religious poetry to read a list of names on a blackboard.