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Directory:Jon Awbrey/Papers/Inquiry Driven Systems : Part 5 (view source)
Revision as of 18:08, 3 August 2011
, 18:08, 3 August 2011→5.1.2.19. Reflectively Indexical Texts: + raw text
=====5.1.2.19. Reflectively Indexical Texts=====
=====5.1.2.19. Reflectively Indexical Texts=====
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Now Robin lies in his last lair,
He'll gabble rhyme, nor sing nae mair;
Cauld poverty wi hungry stare,
Nae mair shall fear him;
Nor anxious fear, nor cankert care,
E'er mair come near him.
Robert Burns, Elegy on the Death of Robert Ruisseaux, [CPW, 268]
A "reflectively indexical text" (RIT) is a text that refers to any aspect of its actual or intended "context of interpretation" (COI). With respect to a text, a COI is everything that is conceived to embody its prospects for communication, incorporating the dynamics to actuate the text along with the media to situate the text. For instance, a RIT can refer to any of the formal roles that play a part in actualizing the meaning of a text, in particular, it can refer to the roles of the agents that collaborate to bring its sense to life, in effect, the agents that work to "animate" it. A special case of a RIT, distinguished as a "reflexively indexical text", is one that adverts to its issuer. Depending on whether its references to a COI are "explicit" or "implicit, a RIT is called an ERIT or an IRIT, respectively. Because the same RIT can make many different references, explicit and implicit, to many different aspects of a contemplated COI, the associated attributions do not lead to mutually exclusive categories but merely to overlapping qualifications, any number of which a RIT can possess in parallel, inclusively and independently.
Aside from the usual arrays of messages that a text is meant to convey, a RIT has something to say about the "communication situation" where it finds itself engaged, where it happens to fall whether the possibility of such an occasion falls within its original intention or not, and where it summons agents to fall in line with its images of things and its patterns of action even if they fail to suit the occasions of their invocations. But more than that, a RIT can indicate the "pragmatic setting" where it has a call to be understood, where it is designed to evolve one or more clear meanings, and where it presses agents to render these meanings ever more effective in practice.
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