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Meaning, intention, and application: Speech act theory in the hermeneutics of Francis Watson and Kevin J. Vanhoozer
Trinity Journal, Fall 2002 by Blue, Scott A
If, as I have argued, the category of the speech act can be extended to include written communications, then current hostility to the concepts of determinate meaning and authorial intention is unjustified. To be understood at all, a series of words must be construed as a communicative action which intends a determinate meaning together with its illocutionary and perlocutionary force.21
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What about the vast differences among translations? Does not the mere presence of varying opinions among translations undermine the stability of both verbal meaning and the text? Watson answers these questions negatively. Rather than celebrating the indeterminacy of texts and the disappearance of authorial intention, Watson voices another approach which upholds both. This approach recognizes that translators and interpreters prefer one possibility over another for good reasons, which may not amount to absolute proof, but should not be discounted. Furthermore, diversity in interpretation, according to Watson, "is constituted by the concern for verbal meaning."22 Rather than conceding that the biblical text is unstable and polyvalent, dissent from an established translation such as the Septuagint, Vulgate, and Authorized Version recognizes that "although all translations are approximations, some approximations capture the single sense of the text more accurately than others, and ... progress and improvement are therefore possible."23 In addition, differences among translators favor the concept of authorial intention:
To construe a series of marks as a series of words is already (in normal circumstances) to assume that these words are combined with the intention of communicating an intelligible meaning; and if the words objectively embody an intention to communicate, then that intention can only be that of the author.24
Watson introduces two important concepts for his program: a revised literal sense and a theological "center" for interpretation. The literal sense moves beyond merely the author's intent: "The literal sense is the sense intended by the author in so far as this authorial intention is objectively embodied in the words of the text."25 Watson's understanding of writing as a communicative action allows intention to go beyond "the expression of a series of words bearing a certain meaning."26 Here he introduces the concepts of illocutionary and perlocutionary force: the author
intends not only a meaning but also an action, directed towards another, which aims to evoke a response. An adequate interpretation of the literal sense will seek to explain not only what the author is saying but also what he or she is doing.27
Predictably for Watson, the literal sense also includes understanding a text's position within the biblical canon. The canonical context can serve two functions: "not only to extend the scope of a written communication but also to impose certain restrictions on the communicative intention embodied in it."28 The canon of Scripture and any interpretation of a biblical text is, however, subject to the "center" of that canon. For Watson, this center is "the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the enfleshment and the enactment of the divine Word."29 His hermeneutical scheme thus functions within the relationship of a biblical text, shaped inclusively by the canon of Scripture, and reflective of the theological center of Jesus as the incarnate Word. Watson asserts:
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