An Emerging Logic
So far, the logic that emerges has two components: an author/text with an implied reader, and a reader/text with an implied author. One of the basic characteristics of these two components is counterintuitive—their irreducibility. Even though we can talk as if authors, texts, and readers were separate entities, in the emerging logic the smallest units of analysis are the author/text/implied reader on the one hand, and the reader/text/implied author on the other hand. Claiming the irreducibility of these entities marks a radical departure from our normal way of talking about these things and conducting research into the nature of communication. In ordinary conversation we talk about authors, readers, and texts as separate entities. In research we traditionally distinguish between studies that focus on the creators of texts, such as biography; studies that focus on an analysis of texts, such as social semiotics; and studies that focus on readers of text, such as psychology. The logic of positions slices the cake in an altogether different manner and in many ways challenges the validity of these traditional discipline boundaries.
But the logic of positions goes further. As there are only two basic positions, and no outsider position, there is no scholarly position of neutrality or objectivity: one is either an author or a reader already embedded within the process. I have undertaken a number of studies to illustrate this as it has been applied across a range
modalities in the published communication studies literature (Sless 1980, 198 lb 1983a, 1983b, 1985, 1986a, 1986b, 1987, 1988, 1994). Even when researchers claim to be studying text on its own the shadowy implied authors and readers’ always present pius a little old fashioned magic in which inanimate objects make people do things. For example Hodge and Kress make the following observation about a billboard: “The text itself is of a scale and kind which implies the use of significant material resources. The availability of such resources is understood by the reader to be a precondition of the production of uch a text and that gives the text a particular status . . . and places the reader in a particular position” (Hodge and Kress, 9, my italics).
Notice how Hodge and Kress make the text itself vaguely animated, as if capable of action—doing things to people. The text “implies,” and it “places the reader.” Hodge and Kress also tell us how the billboard is “understood by the reader.” This illustrates one of the common rhetorical devices that researchers use to imply their own neutrality; they introduce another shadowy persona into their study of texts: the implied other reader. This is a fascinating construction that appears to do the work of reading for them. Sometimes in social semiotics these implied entities take on the persona of an entire culture. Far from being scholarly and detached, such research is populated by fictional (implied) other readers and authors. It is easy to demonstrate that these are highly subjective works of fiction, more so than a personal account of one’s own reading of a text. Scholarship more subjective than personal accounts—a radical claim! But the question that we need to answer in any study of communication is not whether we are being more or less subjective—we have no choice but to be subjective, in a sense—rather, what position we are in and how explicitly and rigorously do we give an account of the implied readers and authors that inevitably populate our accounts.
Tags: Reference