Re: liberation #1
J J R (jrovira@juno.com)
Sat, 21 Nov 1998 09:52:03 -0500 (EST)
See Scottie, I used to think like you do. I really did :) I made the
same types of replies, the same kinds of comments, etc, etc. I think
you're at least as intelligent as I am (probably more so--you definitely
have a more developed writing voice), so I'm willing to keep trying. Not
to convince you of a certain point of view, here, but just so that you
**understand** a different point of view. When you repeat back to me my
ideas accurately and THEN say, "I still think that's BS," well, I'll be
happy :)
Read on if you're interested.
On Sat, 21 Nov 1998 08:21:12 +0000 Scottie Bowman <rbowman@indigo.ie>
writes:
> When Jim & Camille & the others submit their posts
> to this list, are we to assume they have intentions ?
> Are they trying to convey meanings ? Or are they happy
> to have me look at their words & make whatever interpretations
> occur to me on the basis of my own private experiences
> & associations ?
>
Ok, your comments above are probably more accurately directed toward
Camille than toward me. She leans a lot more toward the type of Reader
Response views that place the origin of meaning in the reader. I KNOW
she's gonna reply and say, But you don't understand me, and when she does
then that will all be cleared up :) I don't think we have a free for all
with texts; that we, as individual readers, can do "whatever" we want
with them. I think our individual experiences do influence our reading,
but not in an absolute fashion.
I do have intentions for my texts--I don't expect you to necessarily
understand those. My "intentions" are buried somewhere within my
mind--and some of them may not even be obvious to me, even though some
are quite obvious. At any rate, all you have to deal with are my
words--not my intentions. If I tried to explain my intentions--how would
I do it? With more words. So it'd still come down to interpreting my
words.
Now, I do expect you, as a reader, to get at least one of a specific
range of meanings from my text. I expect you to do so as a responsible
member of a reading community. Here's where I differ somewhat from
Camille. I don't think an individual reader creates meaning. I don't
think that's what happens at all--or, at least, that's not the most
significant thing happening. Each individual reader has been taught to
read by Someone, and has read specific books (that were also read by many
other people in his or her society), and has led a particular life **in a
particular society.** So reading, even an individual reading a novel in
the warmth of his or her own bed, is a community event.
In other words, all of us together decide what language means. It's not
a democratic process--don't get me wrong. It's kind of handed down to
us, and we can influence it, but we can't make it anything we want.
These "reading communities" are varied, and all operate under different
rules (some more different than others). For example, there's the
worldwide community of English speaking people. Everyone on this list
participates in that. That means we all generally write our sentences
Subject-Verb-Object and when we say the word "cow," for instance, it
means a particular kind of animal.
Then there's smaller reading communities within that larger reading
community. We've seen that on this list too--Camille had to tell us
"yanks" that the word she used meant "hood" in American English. If I
were in Southern California and said a restaurant meal was "waaaay cool,"
that would mean I really enjoyed it. If I said that in Australia, it may
mean the plate was left on the counter too long before being brought to
the table, while if I said that in Florida, people would understand what
I meant, but think I was saying it in a silly way.
This much is obvious to anyone who just observes how language is used.
Now imagine still smaller and smaller reading communities--based on
education, further subdivisions of geographical locations, sex, belief
systems, then all the way down to, finally, the individual reader and his
or her own unique experiences.
I do believe that individual experiences influence our reading. I'll put
that in a different post.
My point is that the author writes from within the context of one of
these reading communities--just one among many. I'd think that educated
readers in his or her own reading community would most likely have an
interpretation of a work similar to the author's.
So, you see, the author is just one member of a community. More
realistically, one member of a number of reading communities. The
communities hold the meaning and dictate what possible meanings can arise
from a text. Not the author, and not just the individual reader apart
from the context of a reading community.
I can't say "cow" and have you take it to mean "car."
So I believe the author does NOT control the meaning of a text, AND I do
not believe texts are subject to random interpretation by individuals.
Jim
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