What is a Text?
Most discussions of “text” revolve around interpretation of “texts”, rather than a definition of the term itself. But what exactly is a text? The word “text” comes from the Latin texere, to weave. Deriving from the Latin, most definitions place “text” as a linguistic structure woven out of words or signs. To call something a “text” implies that the words, phrases, lines or sentences of which it consists have not been arranged this way by chance, but have been produced by a person and with certain kinds of intentions. Therefore, a text contains meaning which is open to interpretation.
Sometimes a text can mean anything that we can “read” or analyse, such as fashion, or a map. However, most times we come across the word “text” it has an explicitly literary meaning. The term was first used to denote parts of the Bible studied by scholars, or the body of a literary work which was subject to the scrutiny of editors and bibliographers.
Nowadays, readers and critics alike use it to signify any piece of written or spoken discourse, especially when they want to avoid giving value judgments such as “literary” or categorising something, such as calling it a “novel”. Therefore, text is seen as a neutral term. However, if we see what the theorists think of “text”, particularly P.D. Juhl and Roland Barthes, we see they think of it as anything but neutral.
Often, “text” is automatically equated with “literature” or “literary work”, and the two terms can seem interchangeable. Roland Barthes noted this in Image, Music, Text (1977), saying that “text” had replaced “work” in common usage. However, he made a distinction between “work” and “text”: “the work can be held in the hand, the text is held in language, it only exists in the movement of a language”. Therefore, text is the linguistic structure, the work is the whole product. He also called the term fashionable, the product of the sliding or overturning of former categories.
Jerome J. McGann also refers to “text” as being a fashionable term. Using poetry as an example, he has a particular dislike for the conflation of text and poem, that is, when a poem is referred to as a text instead of a poem. In McGann's words, this “vulgar usage confuses the fundamental difference between a poem's text – which is one thing – and a poem – which is quite another”. So what distinction is McGann referring to here? Like Barthes, he understands text to be a linguistic structure, while the poem is a literary work. The poem is an entity that is distinct from its linguistic constitution. Also like Barthes, McGann notes that modern criticism fails to distinguish clearly between a concept of the poem and a concept of the text.
McGann's refusal to call a poem a text points to Barthes' idea of a Text. Text (with a capital “T”) is all concrete and written texts which have ever existed or which ever will exist. Barthes elaborates on this by saying that all texts refer to one another and are connected through the existence of Text. Each text refers back differently to the infinite sea of the “already written”. To call poem a text infers that it is purely a verbal construct, and places it within the immaterial realm of Text rather than the concrete world of the “work”.
Barthes has woven a complex theory out of defining what a text is, and how the idea of text relates to interpretation. Initially though, it is sufficient to remember that when we refer to something as a “text”, we mean its linguistic structure or the signs that convey meaning and allow interpretation. A “work” is what you are either holding in your hands, or downloading onto your computer screen.