Charles Bazerman writes about how a writer conveys meaning and how a reader reconstructs that meaning in his article, “Writing Expresses and Shares Meaning to Be Reconstructed By the Reader,” which is from the text Naming What We Know. Bazerman teaches that a writer needs to be conscious of how their message can be interpreted by the reader, that the reader builds their interpretations on their own experiences. He writes on how this can be anxiety-inducing for some writers, as they may feel their writings express full well their feelings and message.
From this article, I learned that the way messages are conveyed through writing is a very complex dynamic that relies on a writer’s ability to express and a reader’s ability to connect the writer’s words to their own experiences. Bazerman writes, “meanings do not reside fully in the words of the text nor in the unarticulated minds but only in the dynamic relation of writer, reader, and text,” I wholly agree with this statement; when I read Lord Of The Flies, by William Golding when I didn’t try to read for a deeper message it conveyed very little to me and I could not see why it was considered a literary classic. As well I have experienced a disconnect between what I have written and what people who have read it extrapolated vastly different meanings than what I meant to convey.
Understanding that writers supply the readers with the tools (words) that the readers are then required to use to create meaning is extremely important. As writers, we have to be extremely cautious when laying out the tools our readers will use. Let’s take the analogy of tools even further. Think of a writer as a manager of a construction site, and the reader as a construction worker. The manager has to ensure the workers have the proper tools (words in the case of writers) for the job, or else the construction quality (meaning the readers take away), may end up shoddy at best, or at worst not at all what was intended because of the shortcuts (misunderstandings) the workers had to take.
The tool case of writers includes rhetorical devices. Let’s look at one tool that can be commonly misunderstood, irony. When writing something ironic the writer has to be aware of the fact that a reader may not understand it, for example, if you were to write, “I hate dogs,” even though you love dogs, you would know the statement is ironic; however, the reader does not have access to your specific beliefs, and without context, they may truly believe you hate dogs. There are a number of ways you can address this miscommunication, as an example you could follow the statement with, “they are big fluffballs of love, they make you feel happy, and I just cannot stand being happy.” At this point hopefully, the reader would understand that most people would rather be happy and that you are being ironic.
