William Empson's 1930 book — the Cambridge English School's argument that words are not labels stuck on things but inherently ambiguous, and that great poets mobilize that ambiguity. Cameron makes it (with I.A. Richards) part of the disorienting reading the young McLuhan met in Winnipeg around 1930, and later a yardstick against Peterson. New to it — start with dialogue 07 for the Winnipeg formation.
Across the dialogues
Enters as McLuhan's disorienting Winnipeg reading (c. 1930) — Richards and Empson treating language as inherently ambiguous
Cameron makes Empson's book (with I.A. Richards) the source of McLuhan's disorienting Winnipeg discovery — words are not labels stuck on things but inherently ambiguous.
"Words are inherently ambiguous, and great poets mobilize that ambiguity."
Turned on Peterson — Maps of Meaning reaching back to the Cambridge English School it no longer understands
Cameron uses the book to indict Peterson — Maps of Meaning reaches back to Empson's Cambridge school but, divorced from the disciplines, misses that an undefined map makes "maps of meaning" useless.
"you have to first define maps in order to have maps of meaning"
Connections
Empson's 1930 book — words as inherently ambiguous, the Cambridge English School reading McLuhan met in Winnipeg.
McLuhan read Empson (and I.A. Richards) around 1930 in Winnipeg, disoriented by language taken as inherently ambiguous.
Cameron reads Peterson's Maps of Meaning as reaching back to the Cambridge school of Empson yet divorced from it.