text or subtext?

wtf kind of question is this? anyone who doesn't look for subtext is sort of sub-mental imho

this is one of your best threads, DJP

sub-mental imho

That's not how to spell 'submariner hobo'.

The question suggests a binary that doesn't exist. Looking only at the text by definition means you ignore any subtext, but looking at/for a subtext does not require a complete rejection of the text.

http://touch.schematic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/subway3.jpg

The question suggests a binary that doesn't exist. Looking only at the text by definition means you ignore any subtext, but looking at/for a subtext does not require a complete rejection of the text.

I will put you down for "subtext", then

lols
and
sublols

this sounds like part of a psych evaluation

why did you create this thread, DJP? what are you trying to prove?

I'm offended at what you're implying about my paranoia, DJP.

I am now sad I deleted the "I see what you are trying to do here and I refuse to play your insidious games" poll option

anyone who doesn't look for subtext is sort of sub-mental imho

conversely, reading everything for subtext could mean that you are paranoid or at least a liberal arts undergrad

xp

paranoid? or just totally aware? new poll

http://touch.schematic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/subway3.jpg
― buzza, Monday, August 15, 2011 4:12 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

why is a white guy holding the phone there? are they the only ones who can use this technology?

you are paranoid or at least a liberal arts undergrad

― jackie tretorn (elmo argonaut), Monday, August 15, 2011 9:22 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

ding ding ding

                            |`-:_    BUHHHHH                       
  ,----....____             |    `+. /                             
 (             ````----....|___   |                               
  \     _                      ````----....____                   
   \    _)                                     ```---.._          
    \                                                   \         
  )`.\  )`.   )`.   )`.   )`.   )`.   )`.   )`.   )`.   )`.   )   
-'   `-'   `-'   `-'   `-'   `-'   `-'   `-'   `-'   `-'   `-'   `
TEXT

q: is editing my own post so the ASCII art shows up better a valid use of mod privileges?

a: because i did, toot toot

there is an inextricably reciprocal relationship between the text and the subtext

"I see what you are trying to do here and I refuse to play your insidious frankly insultingly obvious and childish games"

xp more like a recursive relationship #notliberalartsmajor

xp more like a recursive relationship #notliberalartsmajor

unintentional duplicate!

ok I'm a nerd and I think these are both the names of record labels but I can't find images that are embeddable to do an |image| vs |image|

:(

sext vs subsext

animated gifs

we should really be beyond text at this point

Fred: Maybe you can clarify something for me. Since I've been, you know, waiting for the fleet to show up, I've read a lot, and...
Ted: Really?
Fred: And one of the things that keeps popping up is about "subtext." Plays, novels, songs - they all have a "subtext," which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So subtext we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext?
Ted: The text.
Fred: OK, that's right, but they never talk about that.

http://www.trademarkia.com/logo-images/supratext-llc/supratext-75890069.jpg

text or astrotext

Half text half subtext

the supertext

paratext ftw

http://www.how-to-make-a-website-explained.com/image-files/what-is-html.jpg

Good question. For me, it depends on my sense of the person. There've been people in my life where I take everything they say at 100% face value. My dad was such a person--whatever he thought, he said, and there just wasn't any kind of filter between--and so's my best friend. But in general, I'm guilty of over-analyzing what people say.

wtf kind of question is this?

Just answer the question; don't look for concealed/hidden meanings.

Poll Closing Date: Monday, August 29, 2011 4:00 PM (in 1 week)

are you trying to say that we're so dumb we need an entire week to come up with an answer here?

Didn't expect this to be a DJP thread. Are we talking art or life? Don't think I could answer fairly for either TBH.

text ffs

that post is a metaphor btw

Didn't expect this to be a DJP thread

knew I should have titled this "text or subtext? (also: titties)"

titties or subtitties

(ew)

I really don't trust people who always look for the subtitties behind the titties

mental or submental

subtitties are the ones that go down to about the navel

true fact: whenever i see these stupid lights, i think of boobies. that is their subtext; the subtext is titties

http://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/boston/021711-goodquestions2.jpg

http://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/boston/021711-goodquestions2.jpghttp://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/boston/021711-goodquestions2.jpg

Well, this has certainly gone far from what inspired it, and has circled back around to titties. Excellent.

owls are not what they seem

I've just bought Inverted World by Christopher Priest.

The city is winched along its tracks through a devastated world. Rails must be laid ahead of it and removed in its wake. If the city does not move, it will fall behind into the 'optimum' and into a crushing gravitational field. The alternative to progess is death.

The rulers of the city make sure its inhabitants know nothing of this. But the dwindling population is growing restive. And the rulers know that the city is falling further and further behind.

Is this a metaphor? Fuck that. I just want to read about a giant city being pulled along tracks through a devastated world.

wouldn't the population notice the scenery moving around the city

I like pretty pictures.

And bees.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

TEXT

OR

SUBTEXT

I always tend to go with the text, unless the subtext appears to semaphore frantically that the text is a crock of shit and must not be trusted. This simplifies my life in much the same way that telling the truth as often as possible simplifies my life. btw, I do not consider nuance to be subtext.

oh man I get into so many arguments based on my subtext-at-100-mph overreading tendencies

my bf insists upon the text and I'm always unpacking the subtext I take to be implied / entailed / unspoken-yet-pressurizing-what-is-spoken etc.

we have had (on more than one occasion over the past 19 years) screaming arguments about the Searle category of the "indirect speech act", whether it exists, how to know when it is or is not operative, etc.

all i can say is that this like some "texts are from mars, subtexts are from venus" type shit for us

<3

Subtitling.

here's a question:

is there a difference between "subtext" and "placing the text within its context"?

my bf insists upon the text and I'm always unpacking the subtext I take to be implied / entailed / unspoken-yet-pressurizing-what-is-spoken etc.

...all i can say is that this like some "texts are from mars, subtexts are from venus" type shit for us

― the tune is space, Monday, August 29, 2011 4:56 AM (10 hours ago)

my wife (sub) and I (txt) have been doing this for 20 ++ years - maybe this dynamic is universal?

all i can say is that this like some "texts are from mars, subtexts are from venus" type shit for us

I love so much that you said this about a relationship in which there's no traditional gender divide. Because I don't have a problem with people being from different planets from each other, but my eyes glaze over when people insist that it's because they're XX or XY.

tubsexed

sorry, just popped into my head.

I think i'd quite like to get into screaming matches about text/subtext and the like, sounds fun

unpacking the subtext I take to be implied / entailed / unspoken

Implication or entailment, to my way of thinking, are derived through a logical process based entirely on what is present in the text. If, for example, the text says, "he blinked," then this implies or entails (among other things) that "he has eyes and functional eyelids".

What is unspoken is another beast altogether. If the text says "he blinked", then it suggests a certain state of mind, but the exact quality of that state of mind is very ambiguous. Blinking can present itself as a signal of disbelief, or of surprise, or as a reflex action in response to a flash of light.

As a 'text' kind of guy, I recognize these several ambiguous possibilities exist, but I withhold myself from drawing any specific conclusion among them, unless the text presents me with a basis for logically eliminating one or more of them. If nothing in the text clarifies the ambiguity, then I remain in suspense. Eventually, given nothing more substantial to work with, I will ignore that detail as unresolvable and move on.

In contrast, I find that 'subtext' people tend to resolve these ambiguities regardless of the lack of basis in the text, by constructing a subtext based upon their personal experiences and feelings. If, in retrospect, this subtext seems to cohere, they credit it with accuracy. The major problem I see in this approach is that it necessarily blinds the 'subtext' person to a large number of interpretations that are equally valid, but contrary to or even contradictary to their subtext.

It is instructive to note that, when a 'text' person and a 'subtext' person compare textual meaning, they are very likely to disagree. It is even more instructive to notice that the same level of disagreement is likely to occur between two 'subtext' people who are basing their subtext on wholly different personal experiences and feelings.

It is my observation that 'subtext' people live in a world they find rich with meaning, while 'text' people live in a world rich with ambiguity and apparently random detail. Subtext-people are wont to claim that text-people are overly exact and unimaginative. Text-people are wont to point out that most of that richness of meaning enjoyed by subtext-people is manufactured by leaping past any inconvenient facts.

I have thrown my lot among the text-people. Castigate me now.

occam's reader

In contrast, I find that 'subtext' people tend to resolve these ambiguities regardless of the lack of basis in the text, by constructing a subtext based upon their personal experiences and feelings. If, in retrospect, this subtext seems to cohere, they credit it with accuracy.

This is the whole fun of reading (reading anything, not just text).

The major problem I see in this approach is that it necessarily blinds the 'subtext' person to a large number of interpretations that are equally valid, but contrary to or even contradictary to their subtext.

I don't see any problem there at all. It's interesting though that you say text people live in a world rich with ambiguity. It seems to me that the approach that embraces contradiction would ultimately be more rich with ambiguity.

lol no one thought my question was interesting </storyofmylife>

occam's reader

― Juata Man (darraghmac), Monday, August 29, 2011 5:57 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark

<3

There's a section of the Samuel Delany interview in a recent issue of Paris Review where he kind of goes off about being innocuously angry about people not getting subtext. More specifically, when there would be an ellipsis or paragraph/chapter break in a book and it was (to him) very obviously to signify that something sexual or violent had occurred. Some of his college students just weren't catching it. I believe the example he used was in Heart of Darkness when Kurtz's woman is kind of killed between the lines.

So yeah, text is essential but you miss a whole lot if you don't use your knowledge to actually get conventions and allusions. Context probably should have been on the poll, too...

I think it bears repeating that this poll started when we were trying to explain to frogbs that words and situations have meaning and he wasn't getting it (lolfrogs)

It makes me think of a writing "rule" that I once read about how to pull off an ambiguous ending. An ending where it's not at all clear what happens is deeply unsatisfying for the reader but an ending with one or more concrete outcomes can be ambiguous in a more satisfying way. So for example, he either lived or he died, and you the reader can decide.

Aimless, you seem to be saying that when text-people come up against such an ambiguity they kind of discard it as an unknowable, while subtext-people would look harder for some kind of a "correct" answer. I can understand thinking that the latter approach stems from some kind of uneasiness with ambiguity, but to me, I think it's a more genuine engagement with the ambiguity. Because what point is there in the ambiguity if not to make you think? Thinking that you've assessed all of the facts, and that the answer is not provided by the text and is therefore unimportant seems to be missing the whole point of the ambiguity.

big xp

Life is pretty ambiguous, ime.

approach that embraces contradiction

engagement with the ambiguity

Whether it is embraced, engaged with, or merely nodded at, a contradiction can only be identified as a contradiction. Contradiction without clarification is necessarily ambiguous. There is nothing subtextual about seeing that for what it is. Once you've reached that place, you are at the end of that particular road. You can view this as an ineffable mystery or merely a place where knowledge ends.

If the text in question is a written book or story, then I suppose it makes little difference whether you go on to construct a personal subtext and decide it is more satisfying than the alternatives. When the "text" is the conversation you are having with me, then I would ask you (nb: generic "you") to seek clarification, because dammit I am right there to be asked. Subtext is a pretty one-sided construction, as I see it.

Contradiction without clarification is necessarily ambiguous.

That was my point. You said that "'text' people live in a world rich with ambiguity" but you also said that subtext people are bound to "a large number of interpretations that are equally valid, but contrary to or even contradictary to their subtext." So I was just pointing out that there's a pretty rich vein of ambiguity inherent in those contradictions and it doesn't make sense to me to think that a person who creates their own subtext is somehow avoiding ambiguity.

Once you've reached that place, you are at the end of that particular road. You can view this as an ineffable mystery or merely a place where knowledge ends.

Or you can view it as a starting point for multiple, simultaneous, potentially contradictory interpretations. That doesn't end the ambiguity, it deepens it.

If the text in question is a written book or story, then I suppose it makes little difference whether you go on to construct a personal subtext and decide it is more satisfying than the alternatives. When the "text" is the conversation you are having with me, then I would ask you (nb: generic "you") to seek clarification, because dammit I am right there to be asked. Subtext is a pretty one-sided construction, as I see it.

I would say adherence to the text is more one sided. I'm only getting what you choose to give me, and I'm supposed to take that at face value? Surely you must recognize that there are all sorts of situations in life where it's absolutely not an option to seek clarification by simply asking.

I have to demur from the "equally valid" claim regarding subtext- all readings-of-subtext are not equal. Some are more nuanced, more finely grained, more illuminating of the broader surround, more plausible with respect to the situation in which subtext is being argued for, than others. Not with respect to truth tables, analytic criteria or being "true to the facts" but simply, on a rhetorical level, not all readings for subtext are equally persuasive, and people can argue successfully against some readings and for others. I see it happen every week in my classroom. There's a big difference between William Empson unpacking "bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang" in "7 Types of Ambiguity" and some random first time reader of the poem thinking that "the poem reminds me of my old choir teacher who was really sweet, so there's like a maternal quality there", which is somebody projecting irrelevantly personal anecdotes onto a frame, and seeing a gender where there isn't one. Just because some reading for subtext is "bad" (if that means "irreducibly private") doesn't mean all cases are, and the claim that "all readings of subtext are equally valid" is just dismissive of long, richly various hermeneutic traditions which prove otherwise.

Furthermore, let's take a common enough English sentence: "He saw her point." I don't see that the insistence-upon-"text" people can come up with a sufficiently juicy account of metaphor at the literal level to show me that they are sticking to text only- in the metaphorical sense of the word, a blind person can see her point, so the word "see" does not logically entailed that the person doing the seeing has eyes, etc.- Davidson's account of metaphor, for example, seems to me to grant the necessity for an interpretive surround beyond the literal (false) nature of metaphoric claims

yeah i am pretty much text (which lol because academically i am 100% the opposite because hilar english/philosophy major) and in all honesty never thought about it before buy i think i can chalk up my 98% happy all the time demeanor to that unconscious decision.

like my life became pretty much awesome some time just post college when i decided to live by 2 basic rules

1. Trust the intentions of the people you know
2. Verbalize your like/love of the people you care about directly

but yeah if were talking philosophy of language pure text reliance is frankly insane

ok got my monthly single honest and deep thought ilx quota out of the way, back to complaining about the orientation of honey bear spouts and how they ruin my day

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

shocking result