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SEMIOTICS: THE BASICS
its interpretation. Long before Barthes announced the death of the
author, Plato (in the Phaedrus) had foreseen (with regret) that once
the text left the author, the reader was in control. Socrates observed:
The fact is, Phaedrus, that writing involves a similar disadvantage
to painting. The productions of painting look like living
beings, but if you ask them a question they maintain a solemn
silence. The same holds true of written words; you might
suppose that they understand what they are saying, but if you
ask them what they mean by anything they simply return the
same answer over and over again. Besides, once a thing is
committed to writing it circulates equally among those who
understand the subject and those who have no business with
it; a writing cannot distinguish between suitable and unsuitable
readers.
(Plato 1973, 97)
Ultimately readers, not authors, are the determinants of the meaning
of texts and the relations between them – textual interactions do not
even exist without readers (‘suitable’ or otherwise). This is not to suggest
that texts may mean whatever their readers want them to mean or
relate to whatever readers decide they relate to. Nor is it only textual
support that the reader must seek for a sustainable reading. Meanings
and meaningful textual relations are socially negotiated; readings don’t
last without interpretive communities. Similarly, the intergeneric
blending and blurring that characterizes the evolution of genres
depends not on texts but on shifting expectations within interpretive
communities. Genre codes are a key intertextual framework, but we
noted in the previous chapter the frequent absence of text–reader relations
in the classification of generic features. Intertextuality is not
about purely textual features. Although assumptions about ‘model’
readers may be discerned in textual cues, text–reader relations cannot
be determined by them. Readers do not necessarily adopt the anticipated
‘reading positions’, even if they have access to the relevant
codes. Nor should we neglect the pleasures of recognition (alluded to
earlier) that have made intelligent television programmes such as The
Simpsons so popular and amusing.