An Analysis of The Application of Meaning to Text; With Specific Reference to Art and Performance
by The focus of this article will relate to the practice of creating and interpreting meaning in text and performance. The essay will initially discuss the idea of meaning and how it can be created in several different ways.
Meaning in Text: Meaning is a difficult issue to define and a complex and contested area of theory. How does one know what a piece of work is supposed to mean or what its real meaning is?
There are several ways to approach meaning in text, many of these theories have been cited within the study of literature however; they can be applied to any text including image or performance. Some of these approaches are detailed below.
The Literal Meaning: It could be argued that meaning can be created and contained by the text itself. Meaning could be produced through the formal properties of the text; the formal properties might be identified as the grammar, the language and the image. These properties can control the way a text is read and consequently most readers would presumably arrive at the same interpretation. However; if a written text is simply a record of thought on paper and all the author’s cultural meanings are created and transferred, the argument that meaning can be produced through the formality of the text is not particularly sustained or influential.
The meaning is more likely to be created through social traditions and cultural codes. Therefore it could be argued that readers will arrive at a similar interpretation if they are from a similar culture or share dominant social values. It is then likely that readers with different or apposing cultural perspectives such as gender, age or race, will read the text in an alternative way and despite the formal properties of the text their interpretations will differ.
The Authors Meaning: It is difficult to identify the intended meaning of an author if the only evidence available is the text itself. Therefore the author’s ideas, priorities, practice and social values can only be speculated upon. Any person or text can only create meaning within the locale of Pre-existing social ideas, ways of thinking and values. In terms of personal meaning, the intention of the texts will be defined according to the author’s social surroundings and cultural ideologies.
Authorial intention is often obscured by cultural literary conventions. The relation between the author’s meaning and the social values that have constructed and informed that meaning are difficult to separate. Inevitably it could be argued that an individual meaning does not exist, it is just an amalgamation of the social and cultural meanings that surround and have been consumed by that individual. Additionally the text may embody cultural or symbolic meanings which were not clear to the author at the time and only emerge or are altered through other historical or cultural perspectives. For example the issues contained in a 17th century text are likely to be culturally less relevant in 21st century. Thus the texts relevance is based upon the values that were evident at the time it was written and the authors primary intentions are read differently as culture and time move forward.
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