Texts and the construction of meaning

Daniel Chandler
The range of theories about where meaning emerges in the relationship between readers
and texts can be illustrated as a continuum between two extreme positions respectively,
those of determinate meaning and completely 'open' interpretation, thus:

 Objectivist: Meaning entirely in text ('transmitted');

 Constructivist: Meaning in interplay between text and reader ('negotiated');
 Subjectivist: Meaning entirely in its interpretation by readers ('re-created').

It may surprise some readers that anyone could adopt either of the extremes as a serious
theoretical position. However, there are prominent theorists whose positions are at least
close to these poles. For David Olson and other 'formalists' the meaning of a text is
'contained in' the text, and it must be 'extracted' by readers. Such a model of
communication is 'transmissive': meaning is seen as something which can be
'transmitted' from a 'sender' to a passive 'receiver'. As one moves towards the other pole
the model of communication becomes more of a process of 'negotiation' or
'construction' (variously referred to as a 'constructionist', 'constructivist', 'social-
interactive' or 'dialogical' model). In formalist theories meaning resides in texts ; in
dialogical theories meaning is a process of negotiation between writers and readers
(Holquist 1983). Those who stress negotiated meaning argue that the meanings of texts
are neither completely predetermined nor completely open, but are subject to certain
constraints. Some commentators refer to influences on the process of making meaning
such as 'a preferred reading' - which may be represented in the text as 'an inscribed
reader' or may emerge in 'interpretative communities'. Individual readers may either
accept, modify, ignore or reject such preferred readings, according to their experience,
attitudes and purposes. This whole attitudinal spectrum towards meaning- making with
texts parallels that relating to the nature of reality: ranging from objectivism, via
intersubjectivity, to subjectivism.

A text cannot speak for itself: it needs a reader as well as a writer. Research work in
cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics has emphasized the creative activity of the
reader. Cognitive psychologists explain the interpretative act of reading in terms of
'schema theory'. The notion of a 'schema' (plural 'schemata' or 'schemas') derives from
the work of the British psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett (1932), who in his classic
work, Remembering, defined it as 'an active organization of past reactions, or of past
experiences.' Bartlett explained memory as a creative process of reconstruction making
use of such schemas. According to contemporary schema theory, perception,
comprehension, interpretation and memory are mediated by mental schemata -
hierarchical structures (or 'frames') for organizing knowledge. Many psychological
experiments have shown the importance of our expectations in making sense of new
experiences. Schemata embody such expectations. In the case of reading, they provide
mental frameworks which help the reader to go, in Jerome Bruner's phrase, 'beyond the
information given'. Even the most mundane texts require the reader to go beyond that
which is explicitly stated in order to make sense of them, though we are normally
unaware of the extent of such interpretation in our everyday reading. Readers draw upon
different repertoires of schemata, partly as a result of relatively enduring differences in
background (e.g. experience and knowledge) and of relatively transitory differences in
viewpoint (e.g. purposes). For experienced readers reading is a continual process of
making inferences, evaluating the validity and significance of texts, relating them to
prior experience, knowledge and viewpoint, and considering implications. Such
psychological accounts do not suggest that a text means whatever a reader wants it to
mean, but simply that readers must make active use of schemata to make sense of the
text, and that different readers may employ different schemata and may vary in their
interpretations. Reading is not passive 'information retrieval' and a text does not have a
single, unchanging meaning.

Apart from psychology, another influence on models of meaning-making with text is

'reader-response criticism' in literary theory. In 1980 Stanley Fish wrote an influential
book, Is There a Text in This Class? He argued for the fundamental importance of
readers' interpretations of texts: a text is not a text without a reader and a context. He
stressed meaning-making as a process, not as the 'extraction' of 'content', but he limited
the possible range of readers' meanings by stressing the importance of 'interpretative
communities'.

Of course, the extent to which the reader is involved in constructing meaning depends
partly on the kind of text involved. Some texts are more 'open' than others. For instance,
one would usually expect more active interpretation by the reader to be involved with
a poem than with a telephone directory. David Olson has argued that in formal scientific
and philosophical writing 'the meaning is in the text' rather than in its interpretation
(Olson 1977, p. 277), but (whilst some may indeed see this as a goal), textual meanings
can never be severed from interpretation. In his widely-acclaimed book S/Z (1970),
Roland Barthes referred to two kinds of writing in terms of the extent to which they
involve the reader: the 'readerly' (lisible) and the 'writerly' (scriptible). Texts of the
readerly kind leave the reader 'with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or
reject the text' (cited in Hawkes 1977, p. 114): they treat the writer as producer and the
reader as submissive consumer and suggest their 'reflection' of 'the real world'. Texts of
the writerly kind invite the active participation of the reader, and also, in their attention
to linguistic mediation, an involvement in the construction of reality. Ironically, it is
readerly texts which tend to be described as 'readable', whilst writerly texts are often
referred to as 'unreadable' because they require more effort. In passing, it is worth noting
that the extension of Barthes's notion to other media could be productive, involving a
consideration of the extent to which engagement with such media might be regarded as
userly or makerly.

Returning to readers and texts, the degree of a reader's involvement depends not only
on the type of text and on how readerly or writerly it may be, but on how the text is
used. Poetry is sometimes 'consulted' for biographical information and telephone
directories have occasionally been used as sources of 'found poetry'. At least with
experienced readers, how a text is used is almost entirely up to the reader. Certainly,
the reader's purposes are at least as important as the author's intentions. Whilst Swift's
Gulliver's Travels may have been primarily intended as a satire, this does not stop
children enjoying it purely as entertainment. Spectacular examples of bureaucratic
prose may lead not to enlightenment as intended by the writer but to hilarity. And most
readers of an academic text are likely to use it primarily for their own purposes rather
than to establish the author's 'intentions'. Nor are these purposes static: we may return
to a text and make quite different meanings with it on each occasion. Where we have
left marginal glosses, we may sometimes wonder how we could possibly have been so
intrigued by ideas which now seem insignificant. The text you are now reading may
itself be interpreted in any number of ways according to its readers' purposes.

References
 Barthes, R. ([1970] 1975): S/Z (trans. R. Miller). London:
Cape

 Bartlett, F. C. ([1932], 1967): Remembering: A Study in

Experimental and Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

 Fish, S. (1980): Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority

of Interpretative Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

 Hawkes, T. (1977): Structuralism and Semiotics. London:

Routledge
 Holquist, M. (1983): 'The Politics of Representation',
Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition 5 (1): 2-9

 Olson, D. R. (1977): 'From Utterance to Text: The Bias of

Language in Speech and Writing', Harvard Educational Review 47 (3): 257-81

Daniel Chandler
UWA 1995

(Adapted from my book, The Act of Writing)

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