The Mutuality of Text Meanings Through Synthesis

Earlier chapters have argued that readers understand a text through the largely passive synthesis of a plurality of discrete acts by which they have actualized the meaning of perceived text units. The passively synthesized togetherness of these unit meanings accounts for key features of text reading. One of these features, explored in the current chapter, is the fact that the reader is passively invested in the protained continuity of text meanings as that continuity arises from their perception of spatial togetherness. This is a non-deliberate up-front investment in the ‘flow’ of the text which can be so strong that readers can surprise themselves, as it were, by their encounter with an unexpected meaning unit, as that encounter arises from that unit’s wording. Since their commitment to understanding outruns their encounter with the wording, readers routinely expose themselves to text meanings.