20130719.0812

Several weeks ago, I posted a piece that looks at a bookmark that I found in a book I came to own.  It occurs to me this morning (entirely randomly, I know) that asking about why a bookmark would be left in place where it is might come across as odd to a few people.  It occurs to me also that I have often had to address the questions of why I study what I study and why I study them in the ways that I do.  Now seems as good a time as any to work towards answers.

(A note: I teach English and study literature, so I tend to be text-oriented.  Accordingly, I will frame my answers in terms of writing.  They apply, with minor adjustment, to other media, as well.)

In one fairly restricted sense, a text is a gathering of words assembled to convey some meaning that is idealized in the minds of the author and reader but not fully understood by either (for reasons that can be discussed later; for now, please go along with the idea).  The words on the page--whether print or digital--carry meanings individually and in sequence, their denotations and connotations interacting to foster larger understandings.  Much of the work of scholarship in language studies is to examine those understandings, to look at the formal definitions and associated meanings, and puzzle out what they are, for there is more going on in any text than people typically realize.  (This includes authors, who write what they write from who they are--and we do not have a full grasp of ourselves and our identities.)

The words do not exist on their own, however.  To see them, there must be some medium of display.  There must be a page from which to read them, or a screen, or a sign, or the perhaps poorly pricked-out design of a tattoo on back or bust or butts.  That medium also carries meaning, frequently a set of associations derived from larger cultural contexts, and that meaning interacts with that of the words themselves to make the text mean something different when it is in a book than when it is on a computer or when it is a series of roadside signs (Burma-Shave, anyone?).  A book bound in hardcover and printed on high-quality paper implies that the words on its pages are more important by virtue of the greater expense and effort spent in producing the volume.  A richly designed webpage seems to matter more, while something evidently dashed together in a hurry matters less (for if even the writer does not care enough to do a good job...).  Each medium conveys different ideas, even if the text is identical, so the embodiment of the text contributes to the understanding of it.  Making sense of the text, then, requires making sense of its context--including how it is presented.

The medium of display also impacts how the words themselves appear, and that appearance carries meaning, as well.  Changing the color of the text alters how it is read.  Red is associated through the machinations of evil English teachers with error when it appears in writing, for instance; does this not appear to be a mistake?  Yet there is no error in it.  Similarly the type-face; something seems different in these words than for those words which precede them, does it not?  The font can make it easier or harder to read the text, and the alteration to the amount of effort needed to decode the thing will attract some readers and repulse others, changing the dynamic of reading and therefore of how meaning is conveyed.  The changes demand explication, hence the attention paid to features of design even in books, let alone more "visual" media.

The same is true for individual copies of the text.  What is left in a given copy of a book--marginalia, for example, or bookmarks--serves to indicate how previous owners of that copy have interacted with the text, and that interaction offers a perspective on what the text means.  The Irigaray bookmark I still do not understand, but I know that there must be something there.  My own bookmarks, when I leave them in place, indicate things about me, points of particularly relevant meaning.  My family Bible (a quatercentenary facsimile edition of the 1611 King James Version), for instance, is bookmarked at Proverbs and 1 Corinthians 8; make of it what you will, and you might even be right (I have no way to know).  The margin-notes in my own books call attention to what my background makes clear and leaves unclear--and if even I, who claim with some arrogance and some justification to be a master reader, see things as unclear, they are likely to be quite opaque to a great many people, a place where meaning breaks down, and so a place well worth examining to find meaning.

Looking at the things that surround the words, their paratextual features, helps reveal what the words do mean and what the words can mean.  In those meanings and potential meanings there is much to reveal the human condition, to speak to us about ourselves, and in learning who and what we are, we can find ways to improve.

All of us need to be better.