Just a little analogy I use to calm myself...
I get anxious a lot.
You know how the set of all whole numbers (0,1,2,...) is infinite...
yet the set of all integers (...-2,-1,0,1,2,...) is larger...
and the rational numbers even larger?
But even the rational number set has certain limits, or bounds, or a definition. I guess that's what we mean by a "set."
Anyway, I like to think of literary and poetic meaning that way. Interpretive variations are endless (not really), yet they have limits (maybe not).
"How now brown cow" can mean lots of things to a single reader, to a group, or even to the author.
What are the limits? I guess the sound or light waves received and the body-brain receiving them are two limits. But socially, linguistically, how might we hypothesize the limits?
You might say that each word has a herd of meanings, rambling around but mostly staying in the herd, and the order of the words is like some cowpokes rounding up the herds into one bigger herd, and the context is like the contours of the pastureland. And the reader is out there in the middle of it, doing what? Who knows, throwing rocks at rattle snakes or some other bad idea.
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