On the Concept of Zero Meaning of Text

• Main Author: Nikitina E.S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Moscow State University of Psychology and Education 2015-08-01
• Series: Культурно-историческая психология
• Subjects: meaning; content; existential layer of text; schemes of narrative; spaces of text
• Online Access: http://psyjournals.ru/kip/2015/n2/Nikitina.shtml

In the semiotic tradition text is considered a sign with its own content. This content is shaped by three meanings within three spaces of sign: semantic, syntactic and pragmatic. It is crucial that text is heterogeneous from the point of view of meaning organization. Three spaces or three spheres of experience integrated within text existential, rational and communicative focus upon themselves the narrative, typological and paralogical meanings of text. These meanings constitute the true 'pattern' of text. The world of text is the one created, arranged and thought over in great details. The first layer is the level of the plot of existence. And since text is, by definition, an intertextual determinacy, in communication this level of meaning acts as the initial, or zero, meaning in the process of understanding text. However, understanding content only begins at this point, continuing through the typological level and, further on, through interpretational practices, finally reaching the paralogical subtleties of understanding. Text is a reality oriented at being understood. And it is the very structure of meaning of text that shapes the technologies of understanding. One can and must be taught to understand. The paper addresses the concept of zero meaning as the initial, existential layer of meanings that form the subjectness of text