What do we think about basic [meaning] questions?

Question

As meaning has recently become our most-used tag, it seems like a good time to discuss this. Please note that I'm not advocating any course of action, just raising the topic for discussion.

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Many questions on this site are of the form "here's a short excerpt from a piece of literature - what does this particular word/phrase mean?" We often tag these with the meaning tag.

• Some of these questions (for example) are very interesting and thought-provoking, inspiring answers based on deep literary analysis.
• Some of them involve details of historical context (example) or complex wordplay (example). These too may need lengthy research and increase appreciation of the book.
• Some of them simply require a dictionary or some knowledge of the English language. It may still be possible to write a long detailed answer with lots of dictionary references or a mini grammar lesson or some illustrative pictures, but in essence these questions could be solved by a short paragraph explaining the standard meaning of an English word or construction.

Historically, some users have voted to close questions of the latter type because "these are ELL or ELU questions, not literature questions". I've always argued against such close votes because these may not be "literary" questions (whatever that means) but they are questions about literature.

Recently I've noticed an uptick in meaning questions, and I remembered what Shog9 said about needing plenty of "meaty" questions as well as the padding of "aperitif" questions. Again I'm not saying we have a problem, but I wouldn't want this site to consist primarily of questions of the 3rd type listed above, without anything that requires more in-depth analysis. And I'm not advocating any course of action, just proposing that we discuss this - now, at this point - to see what we, as a community, think about such questions. Obviously we want to encourage questions of the 1st or 2nd type; how about the 3rd type?

What are your thoughts?

Answer 1

It’s rare to get a meaning question that can be answered well by giving only dictionary or encyclopedia definitions. Nearly always there is something interesting to say about the meaning in its literary context. For example, the most recent question in the tag is ‘Meaning of this line in Candida by Shaw’, which asks for the meaning of ‘Woman Question’ in the context of the play. If you just give a link to Wikipedia then I think you haven’t really answered it: almost certainly the phrase comments on the action of the play in some way, and we need that connection to fully understand the line. So the dictionary definition would be only the starting point for a good answer.

To see if there is a problem, I looked systematically at the most recent 50 questions in the meaning tag, and divided them into five groups. I find that 43 of the questions are valuable to the site, 6 are ‘basic’ questions that could equally well be asked on english.se, and one was mistagged. Even the ‘basic’ questions have nothing wrong with them, and could potentially be redeemed by an insightful answer.

So my opinion is that there is nothing to do here. A small proportion of basic questions is fine: they provide easy targets for people to get started writing answers.

Difficult (22)

These are questions where the surface meaning of the text is difficult and can’t be easily clarified by giving dictionary definitions.

• What does it mean to peer from a dewball?
• What does Browning’s cloistered soliloquist mean by ‘Hy, Zy, Hine’?
• What is a ‘tongue-leaved eye-figured Eden tree’?
• Why does Browning need to be ‘manned by Manning’?
• What did Francis Christensen mean by ‘the end is to enhance life’?
• What did Conrad mean by teaching to see is everything?
• What is the meaning of the poem “Praxis” by Wendy Xu?
• Question about the poem “Passing by” by Robert Herrick
• What does Camus mean by this sentence?
• Meaning in Margaret Atwood’s “My mother dwindles”
• What does Camus mean by “the disastrous fact that love and desire must be expressed in the same way”?
• A quote from the introduction of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women
• What do the first two lines of this rap by Public Enemy mean?
• Opening lines of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “Riot”
• What is “Protean Ubiquity” in Proust’s “Swann’s Way”?
• “The impostor magician Smerdis” from Borges
• The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm by Wallace Stevens quote interpretation
• What does Lorca mean by ‘the oppressed reds’ and ‘garnet violence’ in his poem ‘The King of Harlem’?
• What did Lorca mean by ‘crocodiles’ in his poem ‘The King of Harlem’?
• Meaning of lines explaining Hrothgar’s ruling in Heorot
• Obscure phrases in “Studies in Classic American Literature” by D. H. Lawrence

Contextual (13)

These are questions where the surface meaning of the text can easily be clarified by giving definitions, but a good answer draws out the ways the passage bears on character, plot, theme, and so on.

• Meaning of this line in Candida by Shaw
• What is “Miss Maudie’s goat” in “To Kill a Mockingbird”?
• What does it mean to “meet the introduction halfway” in “The Call of the Wild”?
• Why did Dr Buford stay poor (and Jack rich) in “To Kill A Mockingbird”?
• Doubts concerning Chapter 15 of “Persuasion” by Jane Austen [closed]
• Meaning of a passage in “Persuasion” by Jane Austen
• What does Machiavelli mean on page 29 of The Prince?
• Explain “field size” and “bushel of potatoes” in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’
• What does Beatty mean by “Life becomes one big pratfall, Montag; everything bang; boff, and wow!” in Fahrenheit 451
• What is the meaning of this sentence: …for there was nearly half as much of the entertaining as of the contemptible about the man
• Is there any other definition or sub-meaning of the term ‘marines’?
• Meaning of Lady Bracknell’s phrasing in The Importance of Being Ernest
• Meaning and implication of these lines in The Importance of Being Ernest
• Meaning of “moralize over every morning visit” in Pride and Prejudice

Allusive (9)

These are questions where the surface meaning of the text can easily be clarified by giving definitions, but where there are puns, allusions to other texts, historical or social context to be explained.

• What does “laconic atmosphere” mean here?
• Why does Laxness mention “second sight” in “Independent People”?
• What does “as hot as the hinges of hell” mean in “The Green Mile”?
• What does “entailment” mean in “To Kill a Mockingbird”?
• What does Dante mean here?
• Why did Johnson scoff those “who toil at the lower employments of life” in the preface to his dictionary?
• What is “the fabled obelisk” alluding to in The Boy at Mugby?
• What do these lines mean in ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’?

Basic (6)

These are questions where the surface meaning of the text can easily be clarified by giving definitions or short paraphrases, and there does not seem to be much else to say, so that these questions would work just as well on english.se. (But I could be wrong, and maybe more insightful answers could redeem them.)

• What is meant by “came to practice” in John Manningham’s description of Twelfth Night?
• What’s the meaning of ‘English studies of empirical studies’ to be antihumanist?
• What does “toby” mean, in London slang of Orwell’s time?
• What’s polybdenum?
• Meaning of “I’m sorry for blaming you for everything I couldn’t do”
• Meaning of sentence from “A Tale of Two Cities”

Mistagged (1)

This question is looking for an explanation of events, and does not seem to be a meaning question in the sense in the tag wiki (“questions regarding the meaning of certain terms or phrases”).

• What’s going on in Charlotte Riddell’s Old House in Vauxhall Walk? [closed]