Writing and representation - Narrative Intelligence - page 282

ing the model. I will argue that both semantics and world models overlook
central features of representations and their use.
On the positive side, I offer two suggestions about how people use sym-
bolic representations. The first is that people interpret symbolic representations
in making sense of particular situations . Interpretation is a situated activity.
(Whatever the form of the representation, whether written or spoken or dis-
played on a video monitor, I shall speak of its configuration of symbols as a
“text”. The “representation” is the actual material object: the sheet of paper, the
speech signal, or the video image.)
My second suggestion is that what a given text is talking about is a fresh
problem in every next setting (Amerine & Bilmes 1988; Zimmerman 1970). The
work of relating a text to a concrete setting - looking around, poking into
things, trying out alternative interpretations, watching someone else, getting
help - will generally be both “mental” and “physical”, though it is best not to
distinguish. Relating a text to a concrete setting takes work because the text
might be relevant to the situation in a great variety of ways. The text has a
great deal of “play”, so that much of one's interpretive effort must wait until
the time comes. This is the opposite of extracting a “meaning” from a text as
soon as it arrives. The point is not that interpretation is wholly unconstrained
by the text; rather, interpretation is constrained jointly by the text and by the
circumstances in which it is interpreted. The only way to explain the point is
through examples.
1. I'm trying to find a friend's house in a heavily wooded mountainous rural
area. I had received directions to the house by e-mail and printed them out so
I could carry them in the car. I knew the main road, but I knew nothing about
the residential streets leaving it. The last two paragraphs read:
About a mile up from the intersection, look on the left for Elk Tree Road - it's
a dirt road with a little bus stop at the end. Follow Elk Tree past the first left
(Elk Tree WAY) to the mailboxes and take the middle of the three-way fork on
the right, Upper Elk Tree ROAD.
My place is the first one on the left, #27. Park on the left shoulder near my
red Honda, and come down the steps and up the stairs to my front deck. (If
you went to the main door, you'd get my landlords, not me.)
I had the sense to check my odometer at the intersection so I'd know when
“about a mile up” was coming. Even so I somehow missed Elk Tree Road the
first time. The bus stop is obvious enough if you know where to look for it, but
it's a little way up the dirt road and obscured by foliage. The most difficult part,