Probably the most interesting thing about a jukebox is that it's really an expensive machine for mapping a short code or button press to a particular piece of music. (Presumably we're talking about one that doesn't require a quarter for its services, for the sake of simplicity.)
To make this a little more explicit, we can say that for each model of jukebox, there is a language which translates a code, like C4, to one of many long, preexisting strings of content, like George Michael's Faith. While to call this a language is more than a bit of a stretch—for one, songs are hardly efficient or comprehensive enough vehicles to replace the lexemes of, say, English, Mandarin, or Russian—it remains a valid abstraction, and can help us to create analogies.
Forcing the jukebox-as-having-a-language analogy in the reverse direction (language-as-being-a-jukebox), for instance, would be asserting that the combination of language and mind is like the combination of song list and jukebox machine, and making us analyze our own languages that way. And there are so many beautiful analogical ties that you can make spurred by this:
- Every lexeme—strictly speaking every word—of a language is like a button on a jukebox, which "plays" the meaning of the word
- Conceivably a jukebox can be big enough to hold, say, both an original song and a cover or remix by another artist, just as languages can have synonyms, or, more gloriously, near-synonyms
- Song lists can vary from jukebox to jukebox, even within the same make/model (i.e. language), just as exact vocabularies vary between people
- Mistaken definitions are mislabeled/misinstalled records, while differences in the connotative nuances of words can be likened to imperfections in the records themselves
So what does looking at language in this way have to say about meaning? When two people communicate, the exact informational content of the sentence—the raw bits of complexity—combine with the e.g. English-dictionary jukebox in the listener's head/brain/mind to play a 'song' (a 'playlist', even?) of meaning. In order to avoid having to communicate the entire English language grammar rules and word meanings in every sentence and conversation, each person walks around with their own implementation of those rules, just as every computer has its own installation of Java, or every jukebox has its own internal repository of records.
Recognizing this idea alone is already peeling away and making evident an understanding that most people take for granted. (And, indeed, this is not the first time such a thing has been done.) But there is more mileage to be squeezed out of this free ride.
Consider an admittedly unlikely scenario wherein some large, accidentally thrown object makes its way over to the jukebox and mashes some key, changing the playing song, to the dismay of the patrons. Everyone in the diner might've been jamming to the previous tune, and the change might've been an unsanctioned event that nobody approves of, but it still happened: how is the jukebox to know you didn't mean to change the song, when the standard protocol for doing so (pressing a different song button) was followed to a tee?
The jury is still out on what the equivalent on the other end of the mind jukebox analogy is. It could be when you hear a random sound (or combination thereof) that seems to have been the trigger for your name, or a dig at your weight, or the agitated exclamation, "Duck!" and are momentarily confused as to whether it was intentionally uttered or just a knock in the wind. It could imply the existence of a sound or word or phrase which, when uttered, forces an involuntary reaction in someone, like a war flashback or the mythical brown note.
BONUS CONTENT. Have you ever been listening to a song, and you could swear that it was this one song you know, but then it turns out to be another with a similar riff or beat pattern? That has an 'unjukeboxed' equivalent, too. There's also an old cross-lingual one.