Text/Textuality

There is no clear consensus as to what constitutes a text or how the term should be defined. Instead, the term falls victim to a wide array of interpretations and applications across and within [Page 2809]various disciplines; however, it is often associated with the pioneering work of Roland Barthes and other literary theorists and cultural anthropologists such as Paul Ricoeur, Clifford Geertz, James Clifford, George Marcus, and Stephen Tyler. Here, text is regarded as a sociocultural product and/or process and is expanded from its traditionally narrow definition of being a mere printed medium to include things as wide ranging as paintings, photographs, maps, electronic media, landscapes, as well as economic, political, and social institutions.

A text, in the broadest sense of the word, can be regarded as a configuration of signs that is coherently interpretable by some community of users. Implicit in the definition is the view that something can only qualify as a text if it is void of anonymity, randomness, and illogic. Hanks (1989), for instance, distinguishes the senseless cacophony of a crowded street from the sound exchange of words between two mutually oriented interactants, or the noise of rush hour as opposed to the concerted dissonance of a dramatic passage in a musical score. Texts are therefore innately communicative and are part of an ongoing discourse produced, received, and interpreted by various social actors and agents.

The reading of a text occurs through its textuality. A text is replete insofar as it is grounded in a locally defined social context. To understand a text and make it semantically whole, the reader has to draw on a variety of background information or seek to understand the particular context that gave rise to such text. Even the most rigorous of linguists with their emphasis on textual form and content make reference to a text's connection with the sociocultural world. Textuality then refers to the attributes that distinguish the text as an object of enquiry. Texts are produced and understood in terms of the broader sociocultural context in which they arise. If read in isolation from the broader social matrix of which it is inherently a part, a text becomes incomplete and indeterminate.

The term intertextuality is also linked to the use of “text” as a concept. Implicit in this is the view that all accounts of the world are highly mediated by preexisting notions and theories. Places are intertextual in that they are shaped by previous texts and practices that are deeply inscribed in their landscapes and institutions. In short, texts shape, and are in turn shaped by, other texts. Therefore, meaning is produced from text to text rather than in and of the texts themselves.