Semiotics (why a text can't just be anything you want it to be)

[Sean Mannion]

"with the division of labor, the person encoding the sign would not likely 
be present when it is read. The reader may decide civil disobedience is 
desirable. I might or might not support their decision, though I'm not 
normally somebody who disregards signs (having learned that it's usually 
more trouble than it's worth)"

This is neither here nor there; the very fact that the individual recognises 
their own response to the sign as 'disobedient' is a tacit acknowledgment 
that there is a specific interpretation of that sign intended - and 
furthermore, this acknowledgment of their own response as opposite of the 
response required from the sign shows an understanding of both the meaning 
of that sign and it's connection to intention; there is therefore no dispute 
regarding either the meaning of the sign (and hence the possibility of 
meaning itself), or any demonstration that authorial intention is somehow 
'priviledged' (the actor/reader understands the intention of the sign well 
enough simply by understanding language to be able to define their behaviour 
against it).

The introduction of the concept of 'division of labour' has no real worth 
here. Neither does further example - if we can say that the intentions of 
the sign and the shape of a sign's meaning are recognised by an actor/reader 
(even if it is just to simply ignore them), then the original point that an 
encoder cannot enforce any significant control over what a decoder does with 
a sign-vehicle is wrong; because in at least one essential way (as above) 
the encoder's intention is being met by the decoder simply by understanding 
the use of words.


"In fact, could it be that there are 2 main reasons why somebody would not 
be interested in the meaning intended in a sign? To wit, a) they are fonder 
of another meaning b) they just do not get the meaning (or both)"

But a) you'd better have a reasonable justification for being 'fonder' of 
that other meaning - if that other meaning isn't demonstratably contained 
within any conventional use of the sign, or if you can't establish a logical 
and referential chain between this piece of linguistic phenomena and the 
meaning you've extracted from it, then you're really just building a house 
of cards. The linguistic object must be capable of transmitting the level of 
meaning you think is there; so predicating the overall meaning of an entire 
novel from a handful of obscure reference or several pages worth of prose is 
going to be considerable hard task. If that meaning is there, and it is that 
evident, then the likelihood of it being transmitted by a conscious author 
get considerably higher.
b) 'not getting the meaning' is not the synonymous with 'not being 
interested in the meaning intended in the sign'. The former is a lack of 
interpretation, the latter is a wilfull misinterpretation.


"in pictorial form, if between the circle of intended meaning, the circle of 
attention by the receiver there's no intersection subsequent discourse is an 
empty circle?"

I'm not really all that sure of what you're talking about here. I suspect 
that you're asking if the range of the receiver doesn't intersect with the 
range of meaning intended by the author then subsequent discourse by the 
receiver is meaningless. I can't really add or subtract anything to what I 
put in that paragraph of my email that this relates to in order to make it 
any clearer. Iif I am not able to understand the meanings of individual 
words and propositions of sentences used by an encoder, then I am not able 
to make any interpretation of the ideas presented that would reflect any 
kind of meaning.

First of all, let's not complicate things by introducing a pictorial form - 
words will do. I think the main problem is again the way that you're 
characterising language. By viewing the author's range and the receiver's 
range as seperate orders that *might* overlap, you're missing the point that 
they already overlap by the use of a common language that has some form of 
consensus meaning (whether overt or covert) and conventions for use. This is 
a first order prequisite for any kind of meaning to be debated in the first 
place.


"I do not know all the conventions, and sometimes do not agree with them 
(that being a small subset in Pynchon for me, unless I am very wrong about 
my interpretation)"

It's not a matter of whether or not you agree with a convention -- if you 
recognise it's presence then you have to recognise that it's there with good 
reason; it has a function to perform,
it's application in a text will suggest something to us in itself and/or 
will point to a larger meaning
(p.s. I find it hard to think of how someone saying 'down with 
stream-of-consciousness narrative!' or 'death to intertextual reference!' 
would alter either the fact that it's there in the text for all to see or 
what it contributes to meaning). But again, if you admit to the concept of 
convention, then you do have to abandon the idea of discrediting the 
presence of authorial intention. It stops being an argument of absolutes and 
starts being a argument of scales and degrees, and in this case (as Jbor 
said earlier in this thread) neither opposing-end position of the argument 
is tenable. A whole range of people might arrive at different connotations 
from a single instance of literary creation in language or through 
convention, but ultimately that instance was consciously or unconsciously 
chosen because of it's range  -- like Pound said, "great literature is 
simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree".


"Expending the time and energy to read a book is indicative of a desire to 
participate in that manner, no? Nihilist, rather than liberalistic, is what 
I would call the rejection of all such control.  Yet, the ability to reject 
control is important - otherwise, who would dare to read "Mein Kampf"?"

Firstly, It's not a desire, it's a demand, and the necessity of being able 
to read demonstrates this.
Secondly, no, the premise that "...an encoder is ultimately incapable of 
enforcing any significant control over what the decoder does with a given 
sign-vehicle" is liberalistic in the sense that, as a basic tenet of a 
theory,  it seeks the status of a general truth whose a scope it is 
incapable of being correct for - you're right, it does "imply something 
further", and it is these implications -- narrowly, that we have no 
meaningful criteria of correct interpretation and correspondent 
misinterpretation available to us, and widely, that a text can have no clear 
meaning imposed on it by it's creator -- that are unacceptable. It would 
only be Nihilistic if we could actually reject what it claims we could 
reject. And we can't.


Boo Hiss! ;-)

Cheers,
Sean