Pragmatic Use of Reading Models

None of our metaphors for reading are complete. None are practical in every situation. None are true, whatever that means, in every context.

That means that, although texts are intertextual and meanings are conditional and provisional, simpler models of reading may be appropriate, depending on the context, the audience, and the purpose. It also means that as researchers we are free to use a cognitive model of reading when the situation calls for it, even if we believe a strict cognitive model to be inaccurate. All models of the reading process are inaccurate. They are all imperfect approximations. Still, all models of reading aren't equivalent or equally supported by systematic inquiry. It's just that, incomplete as it is, a cognitive metaphor, for instance, may be the most efficacious approach in a given situation. It's not ideological agnosticism, but it's something like methodological pragmatism.