Alice in Wonderland.

In the first passage from “Alice in Wonderland”, Humpty Dumpty asks Alice what her name means.  Alice replies questioningly whether a name must mean something.  As a matter of fact every word must have a meaning, or it would be useless.  An argument might be that names of people do not have meanings, but that is not true.  It may be the case that the meaning of the name is irrelevant to the naming of the person, but the name while have a meaning, and in fact Alice means sweet or noble.

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In the second extract from Lewis Carroll’s work, Humpty Dumpty uses a word, glory, in a manner different to that which Alice would use it.  Glory is an arbitrary grouping of sounds that Humpty Dumpty uses to mean “a nice knock-down argument!”  For Alice, the signifier glory has a completely different meaning.  There is nothing in the passage, or linguistics, that indicates whether one or the other is correct.  In fact, Humpty Dumpty’s use of the word could be common in the society in which he lives (Wonderland is far away).  What it does mean, especially if this is ...

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