Agency and Intention

One of the things agency boils down to, at least when we are speaking of author-reader contests for agency, is the author's ability to express his intention in a determined manner. If s/he is not able to do this, it follows that s/he would lose their agency to the interpretation of the reader. However, it does seem possible that an author could know enough about humanity to establish a way to communicate that would resist the influence of the reader’s linguistic biases. John Locke talks at length about what things make language volatile, but is it possible that the conditions of language could be established by an author?

Locke mentions men and papers that attempt to establish general truths by prescribing a logic for the reader to follow (822). Locke also dismisses figurative language as a mode for retaining any kind of continuity in language (827). I do not see how the two of these would be entirely separate. Locke mentions that one of the things that makes language more volatile is its having no connection to nature (818). The idea behind this is that, if something does not have a generally observable root that never changes, it will be subject to greater change itself. Figurative language, while able to make language more evanescent as Locke fears, also provides a further link to nature. Figurative language often links abstract ideas to concrete things. This might actually give greater solidity to the understanding of a word.

If an author, then, could somehow manage to record his personal experience well enough in a paper (or really any other lingual medium of communication) it is quite possible that s/he would be able to exercise a great amount of agency over his own writing. Having control over the conditions of the logic and truth might help to establish the conditions under which the language would operate. This would especially true if the language used by the author accurately and precisely recorded his ideas. Locke mentions that if one uses an imprecise or wrong word, it is much more likely to lose the solidity of its meaning (818).

Therefore, if an author could choose exactly the right words and place them in an order which would be undeniably logical, then s/he would have control over the language that they were using. It is possible, of course, for interpretations of the language to still be wrong, especially by people who do not understand what is being said or are unable to follow the logic, but the vast majority of people should be able to agree on its signification, thus preserving the original intent and agency of the author. I have no idea if this might actually be true, but if it were, I believe this is how it would be done.