Re: Reader responsibility

["Anthony Kelly" <alkelly71 -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Hi,

This argument reminds me of the work of Stanley Fish and Wolfgang Iser, who 
deal primarily with phenomenology and hermeneutics. Iser suggests that a 
piece of writing contains a series of blanks, that we as a reader fill in. 
This reader-response forms the basis of our reaction to the work, and gives 
it meaning.

Of course, in Tech writing perhaps we should be minimizing the number of 
blanks that the reader can fill ;)

The other extreme of this argument is Barthes theory about the death of the 
author; once the author has finished the piece it is out of their hands, 
thus the entire interpretation is based on the reader. Needless to say I 
disagree with him.




"Lisa Wright" wrote: