Drawing from several influential philosophers, Dean Phillip McArthur presented an engaging address on language and the challenges and opportunities it presents with regard to meaning. The address was the 2013 annual David O. McKay Lecture which welcomed hundreds of students and others from the campus community to the Cannon Activities Center to listen to McArthur and his remarks entitled, "Shadows, Curtains, and a Shiny Canoe...to Consider (earnestly) the Uncertainty of Meaning.”
“Individual words and sounds carry no significance alone, but only in their relationship to other words and sounds, and thus, meaning is dependent upon differences, or the contrast between sounds and words,” said McArthur. “Fundamentally then, linguistic signs are determined by what they are not.”
Phillip McArthur serves as dean of the College of Language, Culture, and Arts at BYU–Hawaii, and is a professor in the International Cultural Studies department. He is also the editor of Pacific Studies, a professional journal. As an undergraduate student, McArthur studied psychology and anthropology. He then completed his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Folkloristics and Cultural/Linguistic Anthropology at Indiana University with doctoral minors in Semiotics and Performance Studies. His teaching and research attend to narrative, language, oral traditions, semiotics, comparative philosophy, cosmology, political and economic anthropology, and the cultures of Oceania with special attention to the Marshall Islands.
The David O. McKay lecture series, sponsored by the BYU–Hawaii Faculty Advisory Committee, is designed to present distinguished members of the faculty the opportunity to present insights from their fields of study, and their reflections on the gospel. Nominated by fellow faculty members and approved by the Board of Trustees, the title of David O. McKay lecturer is one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon faculty members at BYU–Hawaii.
For full text and video of Phillip McArthur's David O. McKay lecture, visit the link here: http://davidomckay.byuh.edu/2013_McArthur
Next year's David O. McKay lecture will be given by Susan Barton, professor of mathematics.