is it pronounced "gif" or "gif"
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whoever is more clearly supported by the text "wins"
Also, alternate interpretations are just as valid as author's intentions, all else being equal.
You can ask what part(s) of the source material each interpretation is based on. That's useful to know what basis is being used. And I guess you could try to argue over whose interpretation is holier based on that, but there's really not much point.
Also, just because an alternate interpretation exists doesn't invalidate the author's intention either. JSYK.
You could perhaps point to aspects which contradict their reading and ask what made them interpret it that way.
This only works for fiction.
e;fb
what you are saying is equivalent to saying that not following the instruction manual that comes with a Lego set is disrespectful to the person who designed the set
It's easy to get bitter when humanity then fails to attain those hopes.
Like, 'insulting and disrespectful' implies it's a question of manners, whereas 'validity' is a question of logic.
You could make a case for insulting and disrespectful but that's a lot murkier and harder to pin down i think, since it depends on the values of the society in which you're making that claim.
You're not, and that's kind of the point.
Since it is fiction, multiple interpretations can coexist simultaneously.
For some people it is.
For me, personally, it is not.
But that's still subject to an imperfect process of encoding and decoding, at no point in the process do you have direct access to authorial intent.
The usual descriptivist stance, taken by, among others, the Oxford English Dictionary, is that if people pronounce it with a hard 'g' then clearly, empirically, it's correct to say that it's pronounced with a hard 'g'.
You can prove it. Point to someone saying it with a hard 'g', you have proof of the word being pronounced with a hard 'g'.
If you're a casual audience member, only enjoying it for yourself, there is no need to stick to "canon". You can choose whatever interpretation you wish to have. You can declare something non-canon if you want to. You can declare other material canon if you want to. Or technically, fanon, since you're a fan. But whatever. My point is, you get to say whatever goes, in your imagination.
You might not agree with any other specific person on this. It's possible that there's a fan consensus opinion after a while. You have no obligation to agree with this consensus, because this is fiction, not reality.
(Heck, this is how we get all these religions with their arguing over which texts are canon and non-canon. But then again in the realm of religion people actually believe that to be reality and not fiction, so that's a bit more complicated to say the least.)
Nah. What you're actually saying is "Author, you meant to write one thing, but you wound up writing something else instead." Or even more bluntly, "I think I know the text better than the author does."
nobody can argue that the author didn't intend what they intended
but an author can easily imply things they didn't intend to imply that radically change what they were saying
the primary quality of effective writing is insuring that you have effectively communicated what you intended to communicate
imagine the text as an argument. you have an claim (idea) you want to communicate, and in the text you provide evidence for your claim. the reader then takes the evidence you have provided and reaches a conclusion, the "meaning" of the text. but, it is very possible for you to have provided evidence that leads to something you haven't intended.
an obvious example: every piece of media you've ever seen that was definitely and unintentionally racist
Yeah, this. i've been saying it with a hard 'g' since the beginning, that's the word as i learned it.
Clearly, the author's intent does not exist outside the author's subjectivity. It's not a thing you can point to out there in the world. This is true whether you mean their intent in writing the original text or their intent in stating 'this text is about x'.
But neither of these has any meaning independent of language, and language has meaning only as it is interpreted by readers. But readers' interpretations are also subjective, existing in the minds of readers. So at what point does 'objectively correct' come into play here?