Polysemy: Multiple meanings in rhetorical criticism

Abstract

Several rhetoricians have recently called for an increased interest in the “polysemy” of the text, but ironically, they are not all talking about the same thing. While they agree about how to delimit the term, there are conflicting assumptions about who initiates polysemy, the social action it supports, and the power dynamics it endorses. This paper argues that we should recognize resistive reading, strategic ambiguity, and hermeneutic depth as three types of polysemy that support different scholarly purposes. This paper also complicates assumptions about the critical judgment of polysemous texts and suggests that some types of polysemy are best identified through the adoption of a new critical approach.