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

[Joel Katz]

semiotics, you see, is a very 'strong' language in the context of weblists 
-- while a very 'weak' one in terms of seeing a naked breast other than your 
mother's.


>From: "Sean Mannion" <third_eye_unmoved at hotmail.com>
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Semiotics (why a text can't just be anything you want it to 
>be)
>Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 21:55:57 +0000
>
>"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
>
>

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