The part of this post that caught my attention wasthe detailed explanation following the phrase "reading texts is a social practice in that it involves, inter alia, imagining the author and other readers." That, writes Martin Lenz, points to a significant difference between how we read an text and how a machine does. The comouter is not imagining what the author was thinking or lived through, and is not considering what other readers might make of the text. All this, writes Lenz, happens in "the process of decoding and comprehension." I'm not a fan of this phrasing because I don't really see language as (shall we say) 'encoded meaning'. It evokes thoughts and ideas; it doesn't reprsent them. That's how it can make sense to say that reading involves imaging what other people are thinking.
Today: Total: [Direct link] [Share]
