In "Truth and Method," Hans-Georg Gadamer discusses philosophical hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics is the discipline associated with the art and science of the interpretation of meaning. Gadamer argues that we cannot have unmediated
knowledge of sense experience, rather everything that we know is mediated by
"forestructures of knowing," or as Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan puts it,
the "world of meaning." The difficulty with this position is of course logical
circularity or what Gadamer describes as the "hermeneutic circle." If all that one
can know is mediated by meaning, and meaning itself is a part of reality, then
of course everything in the final analysis ends up being circular and we are on the
road to nihilism. One suspects, however, that Gadamer is a closet Platonist--
perhaps even unconsciously. The Platonic position is that meaning is ultimately
derived from a Transcendent "World of the Forms," where ideas and reality in
general are structured by Immutable Platonic Forms, which, can be "added to
but not subtracted from, rearranged but not changed." The typical argument
against Platonism is that it presents a static view of reality which cannot take
into account cultural change or evolutionary advance. The argument in response
I suppose is that the Forms somehow "vibrate" probabalistically and in that sense
are not static cookie cutters. Truth and Method is a must read and will help the
reader to better comprehend how language itself can be interpreted and used
in different ways transculturally and over time.