ABSTRACT
Experiment: Group A, given random paint splashes, saw image (cf. ink-blot tests), passed to Group B for confirmation. Many disparities. Group A minimally modified their splashes until image recognised by other groups. At least three modifications—Group A increasingly upset/angry that others couldn’t see the obvious. Group A made two false assumptions: (1) text has independent existence, (2) author can control readings. But (1) different interpretations show the impossibility of statements about a text alone—it’s either authortext or readertext; and (2) an author has to construct a reader—Let this text I have created stand for my intended meaning when read by a particular reader in a particular context—so can never be sure of a reader’s reaction. Readers similarly construct a text’s author, whether distant, invisible, acquaintance or stranger. Even face-to-face you can never be sure that your message has ‘got across’. ‘Communication breakdown’ is probably the norm. Definitions of communication are utopian—what some might wish communication to be—but not like communication as experienced. Following Eco, semiotics is closely linked to lying, creating fictions. The endless possibilities of continuously finding meanings—of yourself, other people, and your environment—are the essence of semiosis, and the subject of semiotics.
