Two and Three‐Term Structures of Interpretation: the Hermeneutics of Ambiguity and Paradox

Summary So dominant has binary thinking become in contemporary theory and practice, that the problems with which it cannot deal have either been ignored or denied reality. The nearly ontological status accorded the binary opposition within linguistics makes itself felt also in literary studies, especially in work oriented towards Structuralism. Recent analyses of the metaphor/metonymy opposition and its transformations provides an exemplary case. Even the deconstructionist critique of binarism ‐ a demonstration of the way in which apparently stable oppositions lose their balance and project themselves forward in a chain of hierarchical oscillations and replacements ‐ remains conditioned by the horizons of a binary imagination. The fluctuating poles of an opposition ‐ be it of the structuralist or deconstructionist variety ‐ are two in number and self‐exclusive. Ambiguity, it will be seen, is the rhetorical correlative of binary thinking; paradox escapes all two‐term figures which provide neither a logical nor a figurative point of fusion. Only the introduction of a synthetic third term can transform the binary structure into one capable of representing paradox. Whereas Hegelian and deconstructionist dialectics might seem to provide such a third term, they actually fail to do so because they immediately reabsorb it into a new hierarchical opposition which denies the stasis of paradox. There is, however, a hermeneutic system native to Western culture which does accomodate the structure of paradox. After defining the limitations of binary interpretation, this paper will elaborate upon the unique functions of this three‐term typological model.