ABSTRACT
This chapter examines questions of linguistic meaning, interpretation and understanding which underlie all theories of reception. It argues that attention to readers, reading and interpretation is inevitably part of the process of textual analysis, and gives four reasons why a theory of reception is necessary to the study of texts. These reasons are drawn from a range of fields including hermeneutics, reader-response theory, post-structuralism and deconstruction.
The first reason is the constructed nature of the text, as something which is co-produced in the act of interpretation itself by one or more interpreters. The second is the non-existence of a fixed or literal meaning for any statement, sentence or sign prior to an act of interpretation. The third is the dialogic nature of understanding, and the inextricability of the interpreter from the text. The fourth is the irreducibly polysemic nature of linguistic meaning.
Ultimately, then, this chapter argues that it is not the case that the text itself is a fixed and singular object which can be interpreted in multiple ways. Rather, the text itself is an object with an unstable ontology, so that there is no final distinction between a text and its interpretation.
