The Role of the Listener

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

In The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (1979), Umberto Eco carefully elucidates “the cooperative role of the addressee in interpreting messages.” When processing a text, the reader derives meaning(s) based on his or her linguistic and cultural competencies. Eco explains that the text itself is never a finished or enclosed product. Its essence is incomplete until it meets the readers’ eyes. And each time it does so, it assumes a new and person-specific character.

This observation fits into Eco’s wider theory of interpretative semiotics, in which words and other signs do not disclose a full range of meaning, but invite readers to construct signification from them. As Eco writes elsewhere, “Every text, after all, is a lazy machine asking the reader to do some of its work. What a problem it would be if a text were to say everything the receiver is to understand—it would never end” (Six Walks in Fictional Woods, 1994). Among the types of signs open to individualized interpretation are natural languages, secret codes, formalized languages, aesthetic codes, olfactory signs, cultural codes, tactile communication and visual input.

Eco distinguishes these systems from music (or “musical codes”), which he considers to be resolutely indeterminate. In his view, there is no depth to the semantic levels produced by musical syntax. A musical line, even when conventional, reveals no real baseline or essential undercurrent for the interpretive process. Virtually everything we extract from the listening experience is culturally conditioned and subjectively filtered. To be sure, this issue is less indicative of song, which is actually a species of text, or “music with a message.”

The abstractness of music is evident whenever an instrumental piece is performed. Take, for example, Vivaldi’s “Spring.” Though it is programmatic—linked by title to a seasonal theme—its Baroque pleasantries can inspire an endless slew of associations, even for listeners familiar with the intended subject matter. It can conjure images of horseback riding, a morning cup of coffee, aristocratic tea parties, falling snowflakes, frolicking dinosaurs, a tray of cupcakes, a journey to Mars. Along with these representations are companion feelings, such as relaxation, invigoration, exhilaration and boredom. The possibilities are as numerous as the individuals who hear it. And, because music is a living and continuously unfolding art, any future listening can evoke an assortment of different connotations.

The vagaries of music make the listener’s role even more crucial than that of the reader (or the receiver of other semiotic stimuli). Not only is musical meaning absent without someone to derive it, but music’s very existence depends on ears to detect it. Operating in the amorphous medium of sound and traveling through the invisible element of air, it needs sensory organs to hear it, bodies to feel it and imaginations to engage it. It has no material form; it takes shape inside the listener. And it is in that materialization that meaning is born.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

Words, Words, Words

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

The first chapter of Genesis is a parable on the creative force of language. It depicts the Hebrew God as a heavenly voice arranging the physical world with commanding words. “Let there be light,”  “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water,” “Let the water below the sky be gathered into one area,” and so on through the six days of creation. The terse decrees spoken by the deity are not empty statements, but rather what J. L. Austin termed “performative utterances”: sentences that transform the reality they are describing. The entire world, according to the Bible, is the product of God’s locutions.

We need not affirm the literalness of this story to appreciate its lesson. Indeed, it is debatable whether the author or original audience even believed the myth in a literal sense. Its deeper truth does not depend on historical accuracy. As any critical thinker knows, our world is substantially shaped by the words we use to process it. Language influences our thought patterns and perceptions, and the specific terms we rely on condition our worldview. In this way, we are mini-gods who speak of reality and, in so doing, make it so.

This phenomenon, sometimes called the linguistic relativity hypothesis (or Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), is borne out in all areas of life, and does much to account for the array of perspectives found among divergent cultures and social groupings. A widely cited passage from anthropologist Edward Sapir, written in 1929, elucidates the process: “Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. . . . The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.”

In religious denominations, which define themselves by world-shaping vocabularies, a basic homogeneity of perception is crucial. This is accomplished most readily in prayer, which distills theology, values, history, mythology, attitudes and expectations into digestible and repeatable formulas. Prayers are evocative, not only because they are thought to inspire a (linguistically determined) divine presence, but also because they stir a network of symbolism: images, moods, memories, aspirations, etc. And it is in the act of recitation that the world becomes as the words describe.

The more direct a prayer’s message and the more convincing its presentation, the more likely it is to condition collective perception. This is, for example, why hymn singing is so effective. Hymns are usually simple and redundant—qualities making them ideal conduits for religious instruction. Their concise verses convey viewpoints argued elsewhere, condensing complex ideas into straightforward poetry. Through a partnership of words and music, these songs impart beliefs and standards of behavior, thereby helping to form the (subjective) world.

In the biblical account, speaking is the cosmogonic act. God says something and it comes to be. The creative agency of language is echoed in our own experience. The words we use—in speech, thought and song—create the world as we know it.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.