9.02.2016

more on reading and denotation

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    1. I wonder too. With Iser's idea that the reader is confined to the given sentences, but on the basis of the gaps between them (like the gaps between prison bars?), the reader is fully liberated to create the story world in their own way. But still in the end I wonder if a phenomenological approach is too confining to one's own phenomenal apparatus, no matter how free one is with it. By the way, I find your notion of connotative hyperlinking very useful. Normally I think of a connotative meaning as something in the background of the explicit denotative meaning. But connotations also have a hyperlinking function that transports from one meaning to another and not just gathers other meanings into the background.
  2. Yes indeed there's a lot to be said and or thought about concerning the hypertext/link/connotation area of significance. There are at least two sides to the question , the first being the simple move from one sense of meaning to another and then the formal sense of that movement in the electronic text to wit, in the electronic text there really is a move from one modality to another,I mean from one literal 'space' to another. Whereas with the connotative text, the moves are mental , we follow things with our head, We track the sense being connoted cognitively . As in a simple reference in a poem we would either know the connotation of a given word, or image, or not, and if not we might look it up. In the hypertext we don't look anything up at all, it's more like we are looked up! we are hooked up directly to the reference in the hyperlink. In the Fictions blogs I used to do hypertext linking but it seemed to be useless after a while. And it's only recently I've been doing some research into the background of the original hypertext writing styles and or movement. Linking in blogs is not necessarily identical to hypertext but there are strong similarities, but I've come to see that linking is really the simplest form of it and in that sense it resembles more denotation. Denotation is a sort of one for one right? ie. the denotation of the word red is its meaning __ the color red . Nothing more or less. And that's a lot actually. Not to belittle it. After all to say the word Red is quite an accomplishment.Think of the history (the etymology etc) of such a simple word. Red, a mere three letters but how rich! So red denotatively in contrast to the connotative side. I think our brains work between these two spheres regularly.

    That comment I made about hyperlinking in the Fictions blog is sort of hanging in the air and isn't finished as I've not even remotely figured out a solution to the problem if there is one, I mean a problem. As words were already richly connotative i thought why hypertext link them? then I realized I was not hypertexting as such, but linking with perhaps one or two shades of allusion and reference. I'm not sure if I'm really making sense here.!

___________________   Following up on this comment I realize there's more to it than i thought in the                                                        fictions there are many levels of connotation  .

---------------------------------------------------  As a simple denotation in poetry if one takes into account the etymology , allusions and possible subtextual subvocal references many meanings and sesnse are at work.

It also strikes me that this movement of connotation to denotation is a back and forth thing that  is not dissimilar to the double articulation sense of deterritorialization and reterritorialization  ... and the lines of flight and escape subsequent upon it.


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Posted by cd__ at