Why do they look for meaning in nonsense? (Kruchenykh and Chomsky as unwitting creators of meaning)

Kleckaja Svetlana Ilinichna

The article analyzes the practice of interpreting statements that are initially stated by their authors as meaningless. Such interpretive behavior is a side effect of the presumption of meaningfulness, which usually protects the interpreter from mistakenly recognizing a statement that is not meaningless. It is concluded that in the interpretation of meaningless statements, the mechanisms characteristic of any interpretative activity are manifested. One of these mechanisms is the reconstruction of the context in which the statement could be meaningful, appropriate, or at least possible. The specificity of the interpretation of obviously meaningless utterances is that the reconstructed context is hypothetical, that is, it denies both the real context of the meaningless utterance and the intentions of its author.

Keywords:absurd, nonsense, interpretation, Kruchenykh, Chomsky, presumption of sense