Meaning arises from one entity communicating with another entity and therefore is essentially about interaction. For instance, figuring out an implicature depends on recognizing what the goals and assumptions the speaker must be. (You should be able to give a concrete example showing this.) Wittgensteins language games, like all games, involve interactions between the players (again, you should be able to give a concrete example from Wittgenstein). As Henderson and McCready discuss, dog whistles require an in-group and an out-group. Austins performatives are essentially social actions (promising, marrying, firing, and so on). Finally, the sort of social meaning discussed by Eckert that is created by use of variant pronunciations (or by eyeliner!) is clearly social in nature. What do you think happens to meaning after the message has been removed from its social context? This is what Derrida was worrying about in the case of writing, in which the receiver and the sender are separated from the message. You might think also of the Lascaux cave paintingsdo they still have meaning, even though their original intended audience is long gone? What about a computer program sitting on a hard drive without being run? Does it still contain meaning?
