semiotics (why a text cant just be anything you want it to be)

[Sean Mannion]

...sorry about the delay, I thought I had already emailed a reply on the 
'semiotics' thread but it didn't show up through my inbox.

"I cherry-picked the quote, to illustrate a theory I have about literary 
criticism in general, and to continue a thought I've written about before in 
the context of reading GR: that my gleanings aren't
always subject to what Pynchon may have meant."

You have to admit though, there is an absolute world of difference between 
your gleanings from a literary text not always being roughly what was meant 
or intended by the author of that text, on one hand, and the idea of a 
certainty "that an encoder is ultimately incapable of enforcing any 
significant control over what the decoder does with a given sign-vehicle" on 
the other. In your example of a smoker taking the meaning of 'No Smoking' to 
be "Nozz-moe King", the problem is really just that while this description 
may be an accurate account of the tonal impression of the words upon the 
Smoker's mind, it doesn't match either the referential capabilities of those 
words, or the conventions associated with their use as a phrase (usually 
accompanied with another non-verbal sign to demonstrate that 1) something is 
prohibited, and 2) the smoking of cigarettes is that particular thing 
prohibited). I think we would presume that someone who was at the stage of 
being able to ask for and buy cigarettes at a counter is versed in language 
enough to be able to understand a correct interpretation of a 'No Smoking' 
sign.


"However, it seems to me that the last sentence of the quote isn't 
unreasonable.  In fact, "not taking it seriously" is an example of a 
receiver not subject to control by the intention of the sender.  Which may 
have been your point ;-)"

I hate to disappoint, but I wasn't being nearly that clever ;-). I maybe 
made my use of 'convention' unclear earlier - I was talking about linguistic 
use, not theory-construction. As it is though, the tenet of theory you're 
talking about is completely unreasonable in that current form, unqualified 
(though, in fact I'd go as far as to say it's untenable in any way shape or 
form). It's by the very definition of my having a correct or incorrect 
understanding of what is 'intended' by that sentence (""an encoder is 
ultimately incapable of enforcing any significant control...") that I can 
even discuss its meaning in the first place; it's by the fact that I 
understand the idea that the sentence is intended to convey that I can 
proceed to 'not take it seriously'; I disagree with the truth of the meaning 
--not the sentence's capabilities of transmitting meaning. I recognise the 
intention of the sender/speaker, and the meanings of the signs used and 
therefore the proposition the sentence is intended to express.

This doesn't mean receivers are not subject to controls, but both encoders 
and receivers have to play by the rules of the game - whether they be 
truth-conditions or conventions - otherwise there's no game at all and no 
meaningful application of interpretation. The concept of control is wrongly 
characterised here by the idea that it exists in the 'intentions of the 
sender' alone, and no ammount of braying and screaming "Power Relations! 
Power Relations!" by 'theorists' will make it otherwise.

"I think the idea of "convention" that you mention has a lot of relevance.  
Pynchon's work uses recognized conventions and develops them logically, so 
by reading more deeply something that moved me (in my initial shallow 
reading) I can improve my own ability to manipulate symbols and relate to 
conventions - which is what it's all about, isn't it?"

The running gets a little curiouser here though, because surely an 
acceptance of the relevancy of 'convention' in literary analysis would seem 
to run contrary to the idea that an author cannot enforce the conditions of 
any certain response in a reader. If we take a writer's intention to be an 
illocutionary intention (I'm stealing this from Austin/Grice) -- where at 
least one of the author's secondary intentions is that we (the audience) 
actually recognise the primary intention to communicate something meaningful 
-- then we should assume that the use of a certain convention is being used 
to reinforce a certain 'reading'. Recognising or being brought to recognise 
the application of a particular convention (free-indirect discourse, 
pastiche/parody and mock-heroic, shifts in fields of reference and system of 
thought, central organising metaphors, etc.,) does demand some level of 
inference to be made on our part even if elementary. The use of conventions 
are therefore not abitrary - they are specific disclosures of an author's 
intention. This tells me that 'encoding' is an exercise of very signficant 
-- if loosely circumscribed (we're talking art and not science) -- levels of 
control over what the decoder is allowed to decode and infer. And so 
completely the opposite of that original and widely liberalistic premise.

Needless to say it follows that the further an interpretation goes from this 
base material that generates the inferences it is built upon, the more it 
streches the grounds of crediblity for that interpretation ("the text is all 
that is the case", to borrow from someone originally borrowing from 
Wittgenstein).