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.

Defining 'Text'

Reading a 1992 piece by Doug Hartman. I like this approach to defining text.

"The text has been rendered by intertextually-informed research in two ways. Both, influenced considerably by literary theory and semiotics, require an altered notion of what constitutes a text. Although we usually think of the text as the object one reads-a textbook, a section of a passage, or the alphanumeric code printed on a page-it need not be confined to the boundaries of printed language. A text includes both linguistic and nonlinguistic signs. A text can be an utterance, a gesture, a thought, a structure, a function, or a piece of art, music, or drama (Rowe, 1987; Short. 1986; Siegel, 1984); in this more inclusive sense, a text is any sign that communicates meaning."

with the end note:

"For the sake of clarity and consistency, I will generally use “the text” to refer to the physical, linguistic object, and “text,” “a text, ” “textual resource,” and “textual utterance” to refer to the more inclusive conception of a linguistic or nonlinguistic sign that communicates meaning. "

Here's the full ref:
Hartman, D. (1992). Intertextuality and Reading: The Text, the Reader, the Author, and the Context. Linguistics and Education, 4, 295-311.

And those other refs:
Rowe, D.W. (1987). Literacy learning as an intettextual process. In J.E. Readence & R.S. Baldwin (Eds.). Research in literacy: Merging perspectives, Thirty-sixth Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. lOl- 1 12). Rochester, NY: National Reading Conference.

Short, K.G. (1986). Literacy as a collaborative experience. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,
Indiana University, Bloomington.

Siegel, M.G. (1984). Reading as signification. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington.