It seems like you would claim that there is “meaningness” to a word. I would claim that you are essentializing lack of process; namely, just because people do not process a difference between word and content does not mean that that process is not possible, or that the lack of a process itself deserves a title.
This is a subtle point. I would like to clarify. My keyboard has “whiteness” in the sense that when I am looking at it I experience “white.” The claim that a word has “meaningness” would state that while using a word we “feel meaning.” But perhaps this “feeling of meaning” is just equivalent to the feeling of “using a word.”
My main point of (personal) evidence is that I am currently learning Japanese and have had significant experience (and failure) in attempting to directly absorb words. I find that to actually understand the language I must respond in the latter manner of the hypothetical language learner responding to hearing “Blegg” for the first time. There are elements of Japanese that are impossible to understand as having meaning—e.g. “particles” such as “ga,” “ha,” “wo,” etc. What is the definition of the word “the?” As a slightly less simplistic example, certain words like “omiyage” which have no english synonym can only be understood by a cultural outside through precise comprehension of the relation of the word to the greater cultural context. If this is not done self-consciously (by asking “what are the mental/cultural processes which give meaning to this word?”) then it takes to long. So I do it consciously. Thus, Japanese words (and, increasingly, English words) do not have “meaningness.”
Once you start performing the processing that you have not been, the illusionary “feeling” of word-as-meaning disappears.
It seems like you would claim that there is “meaningness” to a word. I would claim that you are essentializing lack of process; namely, just because people do not process a difference between word and content does not mean that that process is not possible, or that the lack of a process itself deserves a title.
This is a subtle point. I would like to clarify. My keyboard has “whiteness” in the sense that when I am looking at it I experience “white.” The claim that a word has “meaningness” would state that while using a word we “feel meaning.” But perhaps this “feeling of meaning” is just equivalent to the feeling of “using a word.”
My main point of (personal) evidence is that I am currently learning Japanese and have had significant experience (and failure) in attempting to directly absorb words. I find that to actually understand the language I must respond in the latter manner of the hypothetical language learner responding to hearing “Blegg” for the first time. There are elements of Japanese that are impossible to understand as having meaning—e.g. “particles” such as “ga,” “ha,” “wo,” etc. What is the definition of the word “the?” As a slightly less simplistic example, certain words like “omiyage” which have no english synonym can only be understood by a cultural outside through precise comprehension of the relation of the word to the greater cultural context. If this is not done self-consciously (by asking “what are the mental/cultural processes which give meaning to this word?”) then it takes to long. So I do it consciously. Thus, Japanese words (and, increasingly, English words) do not have “meaningness.”
Once you start performing the processing that you have not been, the illusionary “feeling” of word-as-meaning disappears.