What is a text?: You’re reading text, words on a page (or screen). You’re also reading a text, understood as a particular document filled with words. In your backpack you have other texts, the kind stacked in the bookstore, what your teacher means when he tells you to bring your text to class everyday.
A New Definition: Immediately let’s expand our definition of what a text is. The term comes from a Latin word, texere, “to weave,” as in a textile, woven maybe for warmth, maybe for decoration. For any number of reasons, authors create or compose or write “texts” by weaving instincts, impulses, habits, and desires into a material object. It broadens our definition to think of a text as something, anything, deliberately made by human hands in a certain way in order to accomplish a certain goal.
Interpretation: Trying to discover how and why someone made something in that way that it was made is called interpretation. In other words, interpretation is the search for the intent of the author of a text.
A World Full of Texts: These words, this document, those books in your bag are still texts, but much else is too: nutritional info on the back of your cereal box, an e-mail from your mom about coming home for the weekend, billboard signs as you drive on the highway, advertisements on TV, text messages from your bff, a syllabus from your Math professor, rottentomatoes.com film reviews of a movie you might go see this weekend, an editorial about recycling on campus, instructions on how to use your newest iPhone app, ads flashing on the edges of your Facebook page. Books are still texts, but speeches, songs, conversations, art, plays, films, TV shows, video games, presentations, buildings, and events – all things created to accomplish a goal – are texts too. Even people are texts: we compose ourselves to others. Whether ratty or classy, your classmate’s shirt sends a message for you to read, a message about how she views herself, how she wants you to view her, and how she views your shared social situation. When you ask for an extension on an assignment, your professor’s facial expression is a composition for you to interpret. From this perspective, even social events, social institutions, social structures, and – yes – societies are texts: all are deliberately made by humans to accomplish some goal.
The Tree: That tree you pass as you walk across campus – is that a text? If it was planned and planted to accomplish a goal, then yes. What would your interpretation (account of the author’s intent) be? Maybe photosynthesis, maybe beauty, maybe shade.
The Tree, Again: What about the tree that grows naturally in a forest, untouched by human hands, the one no one would hear if it fell: is that a text? There are two ways to argue that it is: a theological way and a philosophical way.
“Everything is a text” (The Theological Argument):First, some theologies will say that it, like everything, was created to accomplish a goal, by a higher power; this is one version of “everything happens for a reason.” The inaccessibility of God’s intent does not mean that no intent exists.
“Everything is a text” (The Philosophical Argument): Second, some philosophies will point out that the tree may not be a human creation, but any experience with that tree (perceiving it, describing it, using it as an example as I am doing now) is going to involve some sort of human invention (turning a retinal impression into a mental perception, using language to communicate an idea, making a point about textuality). The tree is not a text, but any experience with it is a human creation. From this perspective, everything is a text: it is not material objects that we interpret but our subjective experience with them, which is one way to read the French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s famous pronouncement, Il n'y a pas de hors-texte, “There is nothing outside the text” or “There is no outside-of-the-text.” The idea that we ourselves create the objects of our interpretation, so no interpretation is “objective,” is fairly mundane when applied to a tree, but what about applying this idea to things like reality, truth, and virtue?
Made by Humans: While keeping both the theological and the philosophical positions in mind, let’s come back down to earth. Let’s draw the line in our definition of a text at “something (whether material object or immaterial event) made by someone (or a group of people) in an attempt to accomplish a certain goal.”
Textuality and the Humanities: As such, the idea of textuality is that our world is full of texts, full of things we humans have made, and we can interpret those “texts” in the same way that we interpret “texts” more traditionally understood (as in works of literature). Just as you can interpret the structure, genre, characters, and themes of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, you can interpret the structure, genre, characters, and themes of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. The notion that we can view our world as filled with texts is the basis of both humanism (and, by extension, the academic fields called “the humanities”) and rhetorical theory (and, by extension, the academic field called “cultural studies”).