I think I was unclear. What I was considering was along the following lines:

Take the example from the article. Let us stipulate that the professor's use of the terms "post-utopian" and "colonial alienization" is, for all practical purposes, entirely uninformative about the authors and works so described.

Any worthwhile model of the professor's grading criteria will include the professor's list of "post-utopian" works. These models will not be very useful, however.

Any sufficiently-detailed model of the entire universe, on the other hand, will include the professor, and therefore the professor's list - but will be immensely useful thanks to the other details it includes.

Which model should we refer to when considering the statement's meaningfulness, then?

What occurred to me just now, as I wrote out the example, is the idea of simplicity. If you penalize models that add complexity without addition of practical value, the professor's list will be rapidly cut from almost any model more general than "what answer will receive a good grade on this professor's tests?"