Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

graph 2.2
saussure, signs, and semiotics 45
that two texts with exactly the same words, but written in distinct eras,
take on differing meanings. Semiotically speaking, context assigns variable
meanings to the same words and renders the author a context/construct
within which the reader’s act of interpretation occurs.
Semioticians argue that authors simply record the words (signifi ers) onto
the page, and the meaning of those words (signifi eds) gets attached at the
moment readers see them. Does this mean that the truth once held by the
author now resides with the reader? No, that would be a simple reversal
of the essentialist model. Semioticians recognize that the intent of readers
(i.e., their interpretive framework) is subject to discourse just as the
intent (creative process) of authors is. Everyone is at once author and reader.
Cultural theorists do not abandon the fact that authors write with intent.
Rather, they invite us to focus on the discursive context that gives rise to
intent (see Graph 2.2).
Instead of looking to the intentions of authors to fi nd the meaning of
words in a text, semiotic readers look to the discourses that inform the
writing, discourses which may or may not overlap with those informing
their reading. They still read the text, of course, but they see its meaning residing
in discourse rather than authorial purpose. Graph 2.2 represents the
way in which multiple discourses act as an obstacle through which words
must pass from the author to the text and back again. Discourse develops
and changes based on the inputs of authors and readers. It is simultaneously
dependent upon us and independent of us. (Remember our brief discussion
of David Parker in the introduction and his Bakhtinian approach to language.)
In this way, semioticians posit that meaning is contingent rather
than stable and that meaning lies outside author, text, and reader. Graph 2.2
also represents Barthes’ critique of the modern author. When authors write