Perceiving and Naming as Situated Acts

I have repeatedly had the following experience. I take a walk through an unfamiliar part of town, willing myself to pay attention to the buildings, the plants, the people and the road, but find myself nevertheless always first noticing and reading written signs within my visual field. Yet both the signs and the objects are in principle perceived by me in the same sweeping glance. Perhaps the density of meaning that writing promises to someone interested in language attracts the glance more quickly than spatio-temporal objects do. Certainly, text reading needs to be examined on its own terms. As the case of the difference between proofreading and reading for understanding illustrates, the event of understanding what is meant by what we read appears not to arise from perceiving the shapes of written signs as shapes, but from an experience of ‘aboutness’. Yet, how different is the perception of language that underlies reading from the perception of things in other respects? This chapter explores the commonalities between perception in reading and the perception of spatio-temporal objects by treating both as acts of meaning formation. I argue that the sensible engagement with things, too, can be analyzed as ultimately constituting itself only as meaning formation, as an encounter with meaningfulness situated in a context. This includes a malleability of spatio-temporal ‘essences’, as well as an openness to the future. The chapter also explores the contribution of the act of naming things to their perception.