What is text? A Pluralistic Approach

Since the beginning of Humanities Computing, text theory has been a fundamental issue. The question „What is text?“ has been repeatedly raised at ALLC/ACH
conferences. One of the answers, “text is an ordered
hierarchy of content objects” (the OHCO-model), has been
dominating the discussion for a while and has laid ground for well-established and paradigmatic standards such as the TEI Guidelines. But there has also been criticism since the beginning which questioned this model from different perspectives (Buzzetti, McGann, Olsen, Caton, Huitfeld). Do we in fact have an unsolvable problem? As Jerome McGann puts it: “What is text? I am not so naïve as to imagine that question could ever be finally settled. Asking such a question is like asking ‘How long is the coast of England?’.”
Starting Points.
Questions are there to be answered. I’ll start with the authorities. First, I’ll introduce Isidore of Seville, the patron saint of the Internet, who described
“oratio” as threefold. Second, I’ll take up Willard
van Orman Quine’s famous ontological slogan “no
entity ithout identity” and use it as a lever. Using as a guiding question “When are two things one text?”, I will develop a pluralistic theory of text which will integrate a wide range of traditional notions of text. This theory will give us the means to describe the identity conditions of text.
The Wheel of Text.
In a rather free reading, Isidor distinguishes the three components “sense”, “expression” and “sign”. I
relate Isidor’s components to the notions of text as
meaning and intention (text-i), text as speech and linguistic utterance (text-l), and text as object and document
(text-d). There are other notions of text, which fill the space between those concepts. We talk about the text as structure or ‘work’ (text-w), placed between text-i and text-l. We also talk about the text as fixed written version (text-v) between text-l and text-d. And we talk about the semiotic text as a picture and as a complex sign (text-s) between text-d and text-i. This concludes the wheel of text and constitutes a comprehensive theoretical model of “What text really is”.
Practical implications.
But what is such a theory good for? It has at least two fields of application. First, it has applications in the field of history and in analytical fields. The pluralistic model gives us a tool to describe and locate historical text technologies in relation to certain notions of text. All text technologies promote certain concepts of text while hindering others. This can be shown for oral tradition, manuscript culture and print; for electronic technologies
like “plain text”, “WYSIWYG” or “markup”; for
concepts like hypertext or the OHCO-model; for academic
trends like the linguistic turn, pictorial turn or material philology; and even for the description of certain current cultural developments.
In a second application, the pluralistic theory of text has consequences for the assessment and development of future text-technologies. How can markup languages be understood in the light of a pluralistic text model? How are epistemological and ontological questions in markup theory (like the foundational distinction between
text and markup) to be answered? How can markup be used and maybe even conceptually extended to truly
cover and support all notions of text? How can we develop
text technologies beyond the markup paradigm to cope with notions of text constantly hindered by the concept of markup and the OHCO-model?
Conclusion.
How long is the coast of England? The answer lies in a closer examination of the question: “What do you mean by ‘coast’?”, “How close will you look at it?” and “Which instruments will you measure it with?”. The same holds true for the text. The answer lies in the eye and in the mind of the reader. What is text? - “Text is what you look at. And how you look at it.”
References
Buzzetti, Dino: Digital Representation and the Text Model. In: New Literary History 33 (2002), p. 61-88.
Caton, Paul: Markup’s Current Imbalance. In: Markup Languages – Theory and Practice 3/1 (2001), p. 1-13.
Ciotti, Fabio: Text encoding as a theoretical language for text analysis. In: New Media and the Humanities:
Research and Applications. Ed. by Domenico Fiormonte
und Jonathan Usher. Oxford 2001. p. 39-48.
Dahlström, Mats: När är en text?. In: Tidskrift för
Dokumentation (Nordic Journal of Documentation) 54/2 (1999), p. 55-64.
DeRose, Steven J.; Durand, David D.; Mylonas, Elli; Renear, Allen H.: What is Text, Really? In: Journal of Computing in Higher Education 1/2 (1990), p. 3-26.
Durand, David G.; Mylonas, Elli; DeRose, Steven:
What Should Markup Really Be? Applying
theories of text to the design of markup systems. ALLC-ACH’96 Conference Abstracts, University of Bergen, 1996, p. 67-70.
DuRietz, Rolf E.: The Definition of ‘text’. In: TEXT – Swedish Journal of Bibliography 5/2 (1998), p. 51-69.
Eggert, Paul: Text-encoding, Theories of the Text, and the ‘Work-Site’. In: Literary and Linguistic Computing 20/4 (2005), p. 425-435.
Flanders, Julia; Bauman, Syd: Markup, Idealism, and the Physical Text. ALLC-ACH’04 Conference
Abstracts, Göteborg 2004, p. 56-57.
Greetham, David: The Philosophical Discourse of
[Textuality]. In: Reimagining Textuality: Textual Studies in the Late Age of Print. Ed. by Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux und Neil Fraistat. Madison (WI) 2002, p. 31-47.
Hawkins, Kevin; Renear, Allen: Theoretical Issues in Text Encoding: A Critical Review. ALLC/ACH’04 Conference Abstracts, Göteborg 2004, p. 173-175.
Hayles, N. Katherine: Translating media – Why we should rethink textuality. In: Yale Journal of Criticism 16/2 (2003), p. 263-290.
Hockey, Susan; Renear, Allen; McGann, Jerome: What is Text? A Debate on the Philosophical and
Epistemological Nature of Text in the Light of
Humanities Computing Research. ACH/ALLC’99 Charlottesville (VA).
Huitfeld, Claus: Multi-Dimensional Texts in a One-
Dimensional Medium. In: Computers and the
Humanities 28 4/5 (1995), p. 235-241.
McGann, Jerome: Endnote: what is text? In: Ma(r)king the Text – The presentation of meaning on the literary page“, ed. by Joe Bray, Miriam Handley und Anne C. Henry. Aldershot u.a. 2000, p. 329-333.
Lavagnino, John: Completeness and Adequacy in Text Encoding. In: The Literary Text in the Digital Age. Ed. by Richard Finneran. Ann Arbor (Mi) 1996.
p. 63-76.
Phelps, C. Deirdre: Where’s the Book? The Text in the Development of Literary Sociology. In: TEXT – An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textual Studies 9 (1996), p. 63-92.
Piez, Wendell: Beyond the “descriptive vs. procedural” distinction. In: Markup Languages – Theory and Practice 3/2 (2001), p. 141-172.
Renear, Allen: The Descriptive/Procedural Distinction is Flawed. In: Markup Languages: Theory and Practice 2/4 (2000), p. 411-420.
Renear, Allen: Out of Praxis: Three (Meta)Theories of Textuality. In: Electronic Text - Investigations in Method and Theory. Ed. by Kathryn Sutherland.
Oxford 1997. p. 107-126.
Ricoeur, Paul: What is a text? Explanation and understanding. In: Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the human sciences, Essays on language, action and interpretation. Ed. by John B. Thompson. Cambridge 1981, p. 145-164.
Schreibman, Susan: Computer-mediated Texts and
Textuality: Theory and Practice. In: Computers and the Humanities 36/3 (2002), p. 283-293.
Smiraglia, Richard P.: The Nature of “A Work”. Lanham (Maryland) 2001.
Sutherland, Kathryn: Revised Relations? Material Text, Immaterial Text, and the Electronic Environment. In:
TEXT – An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textual
Studies 11 (1998), p. 35-36.