In the entry on meaning in the Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Baker), Jorge Gracia responds to the view that textual meaning has no limits with this:

It is true that “texts are understood by different persons, or even by the same person at different times, to mean different and even contradictory things, and no determination can be reached concerning which is the correct meaning of the text on all occasions.” But this is not true for all texts:

“Although there is wide disagreement as to the meaning of certain texts, there is little disagreement as to the meaning of others. The NO SMOKING sign posted on my classroom wall means that no smoking is allowed in the room and not that smoking is permitted, a fact with which everyone who knows English agrees.”

There is obviously something to this. NO SMOKING doesn’t mean GO AHEAD AND LIGHT UP. But the example doesn’t quite do everything Gracia wants it to. After all, he not only includes the text, but a setting for the text in his example. It’s a NO SMOKING sign in the classroom. But move to NO SMOKING sign to a room that used to be used for curing hams, and in which curing hams is no longer allowed, and the NO SMOKING sign doesn’t have the same meaning. It still doesn’t mean GO AHEAD AND SMOKE but the meaning of SMOKING had changed with the changed context.

Nor is it true that “everyone who knows English” will agree with the meaning he assigns. Suppose I took a NO SMOKING sign with me in a time machine, and left it on the wall of a classroom at Cambridge in the thirteenth century. Tobacco smoking was not introduced to Europe until after Columbus, so the competent English speakers in the Cambridge classroom would not think that the sign applied to tobacco smoking. It would, perhaps, be taken as a warning about how to use the fireplace that heated the room. These English speakers would recognize that NO SMOKING doesn’t mean the same as the imperative SMOKE, and that it doesn’t mean BLUE GEESE FLY BACKWARDS. But they would not assign the same meaning as Gracia and his students do. Again, a changed context, and changed time, changes the meaning of the sign.

Gracia has an answer to this, which I’ll examine in a separate post.