semiotics

[Joel Katz]

look, i'm sorry, but i simply fail to understand how sentences such as "suck 
my ass, you franz-ferdinand-listening douche" can be misinterpreted 
vis-a-vis their specific intention.



>From: John Doe <tristero69 at yahoo.com>
>To: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>, pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: semiotics
>Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 08:20:51 -0800 (PST)
>
>Re the below: I'm a bit confused; seems to me the
>claim of privileged INTENTION would be easily
>supportable by the explicit remarks of intention by
>the writer himself....If I write a novel, and then
>tell you personally that I intended, that I
>deliberately contrived, the name Howie Surd to sound
>like "how absurd!", then I have pre-determined a
>meaning; all the French Theory gooffballs can prattle
>on about that the author has no REAL control over the
>construed sematics of his work, blah blah blah, but go
>try telling 99% of fiction writers that, and see what
>responmse you get - sorry, but there IS an "I" behind
>this "text" right now in the sense that certain
>meanings WILL be taken from this writing by others
>pretty much they way I see them happening in my
>"mind's eye"; to deny that is wonderfull fun and boy
>what a hoot it is to pretend that writers are
>automatons and mere conduits for semiotic action, but
>it's a view that nobody REALLY ascribes to on a GUT
>level; when you write, YOU feel like a director of the
>meaning ( obviously with some undeliberate and
>unconcious secondaty meanings emerging as well ), and
>your sense of intentionality pervades the doings of
>your daily routine whether you admit it or not; we
>simply do not "feel", or feel others, to be mere
>unconcious transmitters of Absolute Ambiguity; if
>writing were THAT ambiguous all the time then we'd
>never get anything done....
>
>
>--- Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
> > Glenn Scheper wrote:
> > > lecture series:
> >
> >http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb/cyber/sim1.html
> >
> > good stuff!
> > "the claim of privileged knowledge of "context" or
> > "intention" or
> > "meaning" is truly difficult to support, especially
> > considering that
> > this would be a meaning constructed by the decoder
> > as opposed to the
> > encoder. In fact, it seems certain that an encoder
> > is ultimately
> > incapable of enforcing any significant control over
> > what the decoder
> > does with a given sign-vehicle."
> >
> > ie, any reader is free to misinterpret _Gravity's
> > Rainbow_
> >
> > ---
> > 1,6 - no Pirate, no Slothrop, I'm getting the idea
> > that there's a
> > viewfinder that isn't exactly fixated on any one
> > character.
> >
> > I checked out the Wikipedia entry for Tunbridge
> > Wells (where R & J
> > meet) and learned that "The famous mathematician the
> > Reverend Thomas
> > Bayes lived in Tunbridge Wells" - I've heard of
> > Bayesian analysis,
> > perhaps at some point I can apply that to the text
> > (-:
> > However, the article goes on to cite a series of
> > letters to the Times
> > in the 1920's that were signed "Disgusted of
> > Tunbridge Wells"
> > Also, Lawrence of Arabia mentioned the town in the
> > movie of the same
> > name (as Lawrence, that is)
> > And, doing my bit for the side, I added a cite for
> > Gravity's Rainbow
> > in the article
> >
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Tunbridge_Wells#World_views_of_the_town
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "Acceptance, forgiveness, love - now that's a
> > philosophy of life!"
> > -Woody Allen, as Broadway Danny Rose
> >
> >
>
>
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