Re: Reader responsibility

Subject: Re: Reader responsibility
From: "Anthony Kelly" <alkelly71 -at- hotmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 07:51:03 +0000


Hi,

This argument reminds me of the work of Stanley Fish and Wolfgang Iser, who deal primarily with phenomenology and hermeneutics. Iser suggests that a piece of writing contains a series of blanks, that we as a reader fill in. This reader-response forms the basis of our reaction to the work, and gives it meaning.

Of course, in Tech writing perhaps we should be minimizing the number of blanks that the reader can fill ;)

The other extreme of this argument is Barthes theory about the death of the author; once the author has finished the piece it is out of their hands, thus the entire interpretation is based on the reader. Needless to say I disagree with him.




"Lisa Wright" wrote:


But in fact communication is a two-way street. We
have the writer and the reader. The writer has no control over the
things that the reader brings to the table.


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