Text: a new perspective

Text: a new perspective

A true story about Mozart, the great musician, goes like this:Once Mozart lived in an attic in Vienna for a period of time. One night, he was kept awake by the sound of some young men playing music and dancing in the apartment below his. Mozart was annoyed by the fact that the pianist playing the piece had left out the final bar, and he couldn't fall asleep without hearing the piece played correctly.

Unable to take it any longer, Mozart got out of bed, went to his own piano, and played the final bar of the piece himself. Satisfied, he was finally able to fall asleep.

The story was quoted to illustrate some viewpoints such as dedication, perfectionism etc. But today I repeat the story just for the purpose of taking it as an example of Gestalt Psychology,or Gestalttheorie, which argues that psychological, physiological, and behavioral phenomena are irreducible experiential configurations not derivable from a simple summation of perceptual elements such as sensation and response. If you are shown a picture of a triangle with a part of it missing, in mind, you will complete it automatically according to what has been given to you. It’s a simple and helpful example. Just like Mozart had to complete the bar of the piece of music before he could fall asleep. That is, to complete something incomplete is an innate desire or impulse.

I say so much about Gestalt Psychology in order to discuss the topic of “text”, which I become more interested in because some discussions in a WeChat group. In the group, I learned a lot about the concept of “text”, especially from Professor Chen Li, who taught much to me. Some knowledge about text is a good case for that. And as for the concept of text, I would say something more about it. Enlightened by the viewpoints of Professor Chen Li, I began to think about the concept of text. My definition is text is a unity of form and meaning in a context. The context, when is not complete, will be made complete by readers of the text. For example, fire as a word is not a text, but Fire! Is. The clues to the text is the capital letter and the exclamation mark. Besides them, there is no signs of text, to some extent, it’s not complete. Whether you hear or read it, you will make it complete in mind,though. In your imagination, you will think of a scene in which a fire is going on. But it is safe to say different listeners and readers will form different images in mind, which are based on his or her experiences about fire. Another example I proposed to discuss is that a book on a shelf as a material entity is not a text till it is used by a teacher to be an example for reading or writing; or by a student to be an example for reading or writing;or by a student who reads it for pleasure or information. When used in these situations, a book is in a context as a unity of form and meaning. A reader may make it complete by combining it with his/her own experience. It’s just the reason why different readers have different comprehensions or interpreters on the same text, I mean, they use Gestalttheorie to make a text complete from different perspectives.